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ONCE AEOUND THE WOKLD 




"The children have kept hollerin' for me to come" 



ONCE AROUND THE 
WORLD 



BY 

JOHN McLEAN HAMILTON 



"All ends of earth remember shall 
and turn to God the Lord." 



THE L. W. WALTER COMPANY 

CHICAGO 



*° 



^v 



Copyright, 1910, by J. M. Hamilton. 



CC!.A2?S369 



DEDICATION 



To Miss Susie A. Young, 

who gave her life unto death 

in our India Mission. 

To my Son, To my Daughter, 

a Missionary-teacher in Egypt. a Missionary in India. 

And to the Boys and Girls 

who shall rise up and go out 

to our Mission Fields. 



A SHORT LETTER. 



To My Readers — Greeting: 

Come, let us take a walk around the world. 
If some chosen friends can go with me the enjoy- 
ment will he doubled. If wife or son or daughter 
could go with me the pleasures would be 
multiplied. 

We shall have some seas to cross and some 
mountains to climb. We shall see some wilderness 
and some cities. We shall see some harvest- fields 
and some mission- fields. We shall meet a few 
friends and see a few million strangers. 

Let us ask for a deputation of angels to guard 
us and cheer us all the way. Let us ask that He 
walk with us who with His word stilled the storm 
on the Galilee. Your friend, 

J. M. Hamilton. 

Monmouth, III., January 29, 1910. 



SOME STOEIES TO BEAD 

I. From. Monmouth to the Sea 17 

II. San Francisco to Honolulu 27 

III. Washington's Birthday in Honolulu 35 

IV. Honolulu to Yokohama 41 

V. Glimpses of Japan 49 

VI. Those Little Japanese 59 

VII. Among the Celestials 69 

VIII. Chinese Characteristics 77 

IX. Canton, China 85 

X. Singapore 95 

XI. Bangoon, Burmah 103 

XII. Eastern Gateways of India Ill 

XIJI. India, Our Own India 117 

XIV. Two India Harvests 129 

XV. A Memorial of Them 143 

XVI. India to Egypt 153 

XVII. Climbing the Pyramids 159 

XVIII. Along the Nile 167 

XIX. Bound about Jerusalem 181 

XX. Galilee, Sweet Galilee 193 

XXI. Land of Hermon 203 

XXII. Into Europe 211 

XXIII. Out of Europe 219 

XXIV. At Home Again ■ 227 



SOME PICTUEES TO SEE 



I. "The Children Hollerin' for Me". . .Frontispiece 

II. Log-house in Los Angeles 28 " 

III. Washington's Birthday 36 

IV. A Hawaiian Schoolgirl 42 ~" 

V. Young Women of Japan 50 ~" 

VI. Nagasaki 60 

VII. Hong Kong 70 

VIII. Enjoying the Sights in China 78 - 

IX. Canton, China t 86 

X. Autos and Oxen 96 

XI. A Freight Train in the Orient 105 - 

XII. Some Missionary Helpers.- 112 « 

XIII. "Two and two before His face" 118 ^ 

XIV. Taj Mahal— The Crown of all Palaces 130 ■ 

XV. "A Memorial of Them" 144 

XVI. Some American Warblers 152 - 

XVII. Sphinx and Pyramids 160 

XVIII. On the Banks of the Nile 168 ' 

XIX. My Home in Jerusalem 182 ' 

XX. Sea of Galilee From My Window 194 ' 

XXI. Damascus and Baalbek 204 ,. 

XXII. Oberammergau 212 

XXIII. Eiffel Tower 220 

XXIV. Home Again 228 



FROM MONMOUTH TO THE SEA 



From Monmouth to the Sea 



"When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it 
shall keep thee ; and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee. ' ' 



"Monmouth to Monmouth," the ticket 
reads, but the world's circuit lies between the 
words. 

A trip around the world leads further away 
for twelve thousand miles, yet I count that 
each step in all the circuit brings me nearer 
home. 

I have read somewhere that the world is 
round and I want to see if it is. I have heard 
somewhere that the earth's surface is one- 
fourth land and three-fourths water and I 
want to see if it is. I want to see the oceans 
which separate the continents and some things 

19 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

on the other side, some high mountains, some 
great cities and some strange people. I want 
to see the summer land of Hawaii and the 
Sunrise Kingdom, and talk to the Celestials 
and walk a bit along India's Coral Strand. I 
want to climb the pyramids and sail on the 
Nile. I want to see the City of Jerusalem and 
the Sea of Galilee. I want to see that city on 
the Tiber and those forests along the Rhine. 
I want to see the land from which my fathers 
came, dear old Ireland, and the land from 
which my first-love flock came, dear old Scot- 
land. 

Most of all I want to visit the mission-fields, 
for the kingdom of Christ is greater than the 
whole earth. I do not know when I first heard 
of missions. I was just about old enough to 
hear when our foreign missions were started. 
As I lay in my cradle I heard my father and 
mother tell the story of the founding of our 
foreign missions. Babies know more about 
the Kingdom of Heaven than we give them 
credit for. 

Ever since my childhood teacher, Miss 

20 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

Sadie McKown, read to me letters from her 
missionary sister, Miss Martha McKown, 
of Cairo, Egypt, I have wanted to visit our 
mission fields. And now that I have son and 
daughter in Egypt and India to welcome me 
— I must start. Not long ago I had an hour's 
ride with a fine old saint, eighty-four years 
old, who was traveling alone from Ohio to 
California, and he said, "I just have to go, for 
the children out there have kept hollering for 
me to come." 

Saturday, January 29, 1 left my Monmouth 
home, and spent Sabbath at Albia, Iowa, 
preaching at Service, where I was licensed 
thirty-two years ago. A good congregation, 
praying for a pastor to come. Monday eve- 
ning I was in Fort Morgan, Colorado, with 
Judge R. J. Graham, my college classmate 
and chum, and had a delightful time with him 
and his fine family. Our new church there is 
beautiful without and within, and Pastor Pol- 
lock and his people are busy doing good. Mr. 
Donald Reid stepped in to send tidings to his 
daughter, Elizabeth, in Egypt. I saw the 

21 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

cheerful face of Rev. J. P. Gibson one minute. 
I could not see Rev. J. H. White, for he was 
out in the field and his field covers the states 
of Colorado and Nebraska. The Denver peo- 
ple, about sixty thousand of them, were out 
in the park watching a flying machine that 
could not fly, much. The Colorado farmers 
were plowing. 

By the Santa Fe I expected to miss most 
of the mountains, but saw a thousand miles 
of them. The mountains with their infinity 
of forms and colorings are interesting ever- 
more. They are grander than all that has 
been written of them and more beautiful than 
any picture ever made of them. They speak of 
God's majesty and power and patience. The 
continental stretches of dead lands in New 
Mexico and Arizona burden us. There is a 
sense of loneliness and loss in their immensity. 
There is pathos in their fruitlessness. Can 
these stones be made bread? It looks like 
the new earth will have to come before these 
deserts bloom. In your little garden you can 
raise more good things in one summer than 

22 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

have grown on a million of these acres in the 
last thousand years. Yet, I believe that in a 
time soon to come, by irrigation and adapting 
desert conditions, these waste lands will feed 
multitudes. 

Travel is swifter now than three score years 
ago, when some of my kindred drove ox teams 
from Ohio to California. Then it was a year 
of hard travel and privation; now it is a " joy 
ride" of a few days and hours. 

Pleasant people on the trains, now; clean, 
courteous and companionable. In. twenty- 
nine hundred miles I saw but two whiskey 
bottles and heard but two blasphemers. The 
bottles and blasphemers belonged to each 
other. In our coach were half a dozen little 
children and two babies who added to the 
cheerful life. After a thousand miles of des- 
ert it is like passing from death to life to drop 
into the valley at San Bernardino with its gar- 
dens and vineyards and orchards in full bloom 
and fruitage. The cities of the coast are a 
revelation in their great commercial interests, 
but more in their fruits and flowers, a vast 

23 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

blooming conservatory fifty miles wide and 
hundreds of miles long. The finest things in 
the great gardens and conservatories of the 
East can be duplicated in the common suburbs 
of these cities. 

Los Angeles and its environs with trees 
yielding their fruits every month and ever- 
blooming flowers might do for an earthy vesti- 
bule to Paradise, but if Heaven indeed lay 
just beyond I would keep on walking fast. 

Some very fine residences here on the coast, 
built by merchant princes, mining magnates, 
railroad kings, pork packers, brewers and 
patent medicine men. Some years ago in a 
small town in Nebraska I met a young barber. 
He was called Pat. While Pat cut off hair he 
mused on how to make it grown on again. He 
concocted a hair grower. He quit barbering to 
sell it and broke up. Then he went to Chicago 
and barbered some, but spent most of his time 
handing out announcements of his hair grow- 
er. It began to sell and in ten years Pat had 
$2,000,000. He and his wife live in a royal 
palace here. They are not fond of human 

24 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

society, but have a fine collection of monkeys. 
Pat, the millionaire hair grower, himself, is 
bald headed! 

Had five days in Los Angeles with kindred 
and friends. Spent Sabbath with Dr. J. F. 
Ross at Harvard Heights and preached not 
to strangers, but to friends, some from my 
own, dear Amity, and some from Reinbeck, 
Waterloo, Tarkio and Lincoln. Mr. and Mrs. 
Peter McCornack, of Des Moines, helpers in 
every good work, were there for the day. I 
heard good reports from our four churches 
in Los Angeles. Had a day's ride in the San 
Joaquin Valley with Mr. James Porter, of 
Reinbeck, Iowa, in his car "Elsie." He is 
opening up a little paradise here. They are 
turning the water on in these great valleys 
and this state will soon double its fruitfulness. 

Had five days in San Francisco. The city 
is greater and grander than ever. Spent the 
Sabbath in Dr. H. H. Bell's home and church. 
Found thirty-one young men in the pastor's 
teacher training class. At a recent com- 
munion among others a disciple band of twelve 

25 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

young men united. Dr. Bell and Ms family 
are in lively touch with the people, old and 
young. There are hosts of earnest Christian 
workers and hope for the Kingdom in the 
Golden City. 

One day I enjoyed a picnic dinner in the 
University campus at Berkeley, one of the 
pretty places of earth. 

This afternoon I sail for Yokohoma on the 
Chiyo Maru. As I am a pilgrim preacher, my 
beloved flocks are not here to wave me a tear- 
ful farewell. 

San Francisco, February 15, 1910. 



26 



SAN FRANCISCO TO HONOLULU 



n 



San Francisco to Honolulu 



"Sunset skies, 

in sunset lands, 

by sunset seas. 1 



— Bret Harte. 



San Francisco, rebuilt more gloriously, is 
smiling and singing and sinning as if it had 
never heard of earthquake and fire. New San 
Francisco is not like the old in its beginning, 
huts and shanties built of logs and boards, 
but solid, magnificent, towering palaces, built 
of concrete, steel, granite and marble; grace- 
ful, finished, enduring. In less time than wise 
men said it would take to remove the rubbish, 
the four thousand acres of ashes are covered 
closely with a modern city. It has one hun- 

29 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

dred and fifty new hotels, with accommoda- 
tions for thirty-five thousand people, and a 
large number of these cost from one million 
dollars to eight million dollars each. 

What we read in the daily headlines of this 
city's craft and graft does not tell- the full 
story of its life. Most of its half million peo- 
ple are peaceable and kind. Most of its mer- 
chants are honest. Most of its husbands and 
wives are faithful and loving. Most of its 
young people are doing well in school and 
work. Most of its preachers are declaring 
God's mercy in Christ. The Lord God is 
watching over the city, weeping over its sins 
and rejoicing over its holy victories. 

There are many beauty spots about the city: 
Golden Gate Park, the University parks, Muir 
Woods, Mt. Tamalpais, and further away 
Lake Tahoe. 

Distances in California are surprising. San 
Francisco and Los Angeles do not face up to 
each other, as, Pittsburgh and Allegheny used 
to, as some suppose, but are as far apart as 
Pittsburgh and Chicago. Before leaving the 

30 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

New World I found some places I supposed 
were in the old: London, Paris, Berlin, Naples, 
Cairo, Smyrna, Hebron, Zion, Bethlehem and 
Bagdad. 

We sailed from San Francisco, February 15, 
on the fine new Japanese steamer, ' ' The ClnVo 
Maru." Maybe two or three of my readers 
do not know any more about a ship 
than I did a month ago; so I will write 
that this ship is 550 feet long, 63 wide, 
21,000 tons displacement, triple screw, liquid 
fuel, wireless telegraplry, 1,100 passengers, 
sometimes. It has fine large staterooms and 
berths are longer than the longest man on 
board, and the two men in this room are, both, 
twelve feet and eight inches tall. We have a 
dining room as long as the month of May and 
a menu card as long as a French lesson. The 
passengers represent many nationalities and 
callings. Indeed, I learned in the Episcopal 
service that we have on board "all sorts and 
conditions of men." The ship starts off stead- 
ily and with an assurance that it knows where 
it is going. 

31 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

Most of us have had dominion over the sea. 
I have not seen any one paying tribute to it. 
Some absented themselves from meals and re- 
ported that they had been out of town. 

We have a little daily, "The Wireless Dis- 
patch/' with cheerful news from the homeland 
about prize-fights, strikes, food stored seven 
years by the packers and vessels lost at sea. 

Our first Sabbath at sea was serenely pleas- 
ant. A good company gathered for worship. 
I was glad to hear a throng singing, "Jesus, 
my Prophet, Priest and King." "The beauti- 
ful English service," with its good Bible 
verses, repetition prayers, cigarette preacher 
and sermonette apology, missed an oppor- 
tunit}^. 

We had a pleasant stop at Honolulu. We 
learned the meaning of that word which is 
said to be written over every Hawaiian door, 
Aloha! The whitecaps came dancing out on 
the waves to welcome us. The mountains above 
the city rose up to greet us. Some of the na- 
tives swam out to meet us. The native 
Hawaiian is dark brown when washed and his 

32 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

hair is black and straight when wet. We all 
know the Hawaiian islands are away out in 
the Pacific ocean toward China, but maybe 
not every one of us can recite promptly the 
name of the chief islands: Hawaii, Maui, 
Lanai, Molokai, Oahu, Kaui, and Kahoolawe. 
I cannot, but I can write them from the map. 

On the world map there is a small dot named 
Hawaii and on that dot a smaller dot named 
Honolulu. So, many count that Honolulu is 
on the island of Hawaii, while it is on Oahu 
and Hawaii is 200 miles away. On the map 
of the island Oahu does not look any bigger 
than the Reinbeck park, but it is as big as a 
part of the state of Texas. 

It is fine to be back on the earth again. 

Honolulu, February 21, 1910. 



33 



WASHINGTON'S BIETHDAY IN 
HONOLULU 




Celebrating Washington's birthday in Honolulu 



Ill 

Washington's Birthday in Honolulu 



' ' This widespread republic is "Washington 's true memorial. 
As long as human hearts pant and human tongues plead for lib- 
erty, those hearts shall enshrine the memory and those tongues 
prolong the fame of Washington. ' ' — Winthrop. 



February 22, 1910, the "Chiyo Maru" west- 
ward bound, waited one day in Honolulu to 
give its one thousand passengers an oppor- 
tunity to celebrate the birthday of the father 
of our common country with our people of the 
ocean city, and this little twelve-year old mem- 
ber of our republic threw more enthusiasm 
into the celebration of Washington's birthday 
than I have ever seen in the homeland. The 
Hawaiians have the holiday spirit in their 
make-up and respond readily to the call for a 

37 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

celebration. Their exercises had more of the 
spirit and splendor of our old-time celebrations 
of the Fourth of July. Proper preparations 
had been made the day and evening before 
with exercises and addresses on the life of 
Washington in the schools and colleges. A 
neat souvenir had been scattered through the 
city with a calendar-summary of the life and 
work of Washington. 

On the day of celebration the whole city 
seemed to wake up early. When a child I could 
get up early on Christmas and the Fourth of 
July. By sunrise the city was decorated with 
banners and flowers. From capitol and 
churches and schools and ships and stores and 
homes and vehicles and horses floated out the 
stars and stripes. At an early hour George 
Washington himself looked out lovingly from 
windows and porches upon the later children 
of his adoption. 

By nine o'clock the streets were crowded 
with men, women and children, and the rest 
of the people were watching from the house- 
tops. It was a representative company, Amer- 

38 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

icans, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese and a 
coloring of native Hawaiians. A well-dressed 
throng, too, clad in white raiment or gayer 
colors, with such a profusion of flowers, in 
bouquets, wreaths and garlands. 

At ten o'clock, led by five bands of music, 
came the great procession, a floral parade and 
general exposition, decorated autos,auto floats, 
horse-drawn floats, soldiers, marines and 
princesses from each island, as in the old-time 
pageant. International floats were shown by 
the German, British, Japanese and Chinese 
colonies, and by the American officials. The 
school and college section was interesting; the 
schools and colleges of the city with proper 
representation and graduates of Harvard, 
Yale, Princeton and Punahou in line. The pro- 
cession of the princesses was pretty, inter- 
island representatives in queenly array on 
beautiful horses, attended by a youthful ret- 
inue of outriders. In the afternoon were 
sports and in the evening appropriate fire- 
works from a great home-made volcano. Good 
order and pleasant behavior marked the day. 

39 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

It was a day of delight for the multitudes of 
children. 

I took a walk in the country and saw rice 
fields and cane fields. I took a ride in the city 
and saw the capitol, churches, schools, col- 
leges, parks and an aquarium of fishes as 
vari-colored as the flowers. 

Hononlulu has fine educational opportun- 
ities in its schools, colleges, universities and 
abundant libraries. Think of a library in the 
" Sandwich Islands" with 10,000 volumes! 
Missions in these islands have been an ex- 
ample. Intemperance has slain its thousands, 
but the temperance forces promise prohibi- 
tion at an early day. With their new political 
and gospel privileges, these islands, which 
have had such a sad and tragic history, ought 
to enter upon a brighter day. 

Honolulu, February 22, 1910. 



40 



HONOLULU TO YOKOHAMA 









- - 


;- f 




■ m 


l mm 


f : - 


b n 


v. 


I^B 


; -'"" >§ 





A Ha\raian school glrX 



IV 

Honolulu to Yokohama 



"It's sunshine there and moonshine there, 

And starshine all the time, 
And it's never cold and none get old 

In its lovely summer clime." 



HAWAII 



No alien land in all the world has any deep, strong charm for 
me but that one; no other land could so longingly and beseech- 
ingly haunt me sleeping and waking, through more than half a 
lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it 
abides; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its 
balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the 
sun; the pulsing of its surf beat is in my ear; I can see its 
garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing 
by the shore; its remote summits floating like islands above the 
cloud-rack; I can feel the spirit of its woodland solitudes; I 
can hear the plash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the 
breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago. — Mark Twain. 

43 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

The Hawaiians have a pleasant country, and 
want the pretty words of earth and some of 
heaven to describe it. They call it the "Para- 
dise of the Pacific," and "Sweet Fields of 
Eden." They say they are "Under the Tur- 
quoise Sky" and that "In Hawaii every day 
is a June Day." But, these volcano-blasted 
mountainsides do not look much like the sweet 
fields of Eden. They say that in all these is- 
lands there is not a poisonous plant or deadly 
reptile or dangerous animal. Indeed it is the 
only place in all our possessions where there is 
nothing to hurt or destroy; and it isn't, for the 
adder that stingeth, and the serpent that 
biteth and the lion that devoureth are there. 

But these islands have an easy climate and 
many pretty places, and grains and fruits grow 
abundantly. The island of Oahu, on which 
Honolulu sits, is about the size and shape of 
an average county in Ohio and one can see a 
large part of it from the harbor. It does not 
look like the mountains left room for much 
else. But there is room for this great city of 
Honolulu stretching for nine miles along the 

44 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

beach and reaching back upon the mountains, 
and room for some villages and plains and 
rivers and lakes, and forests and pastures and 
great sugar and rice plantations and orchards 
and gardens, and 90,000 people, half of whom 
live in Honolulu and the other half on the 
plantations, but at some seasons they nearly 
all swarm into the city. 

But the prospects of the native Hawaiians 
are not bright. They are but a remnant, many 
less than 100 years ago. The Japanese almost 
outnumber the natives; then in order come 
Chinese, Portuguese and Americans. The na- 
tive race is passing; easy children of nature, 
lovers of play and rest. They are dying 
through indolence and intemperance, and los- 
ing their identity in intermarriages. 

As we neared Japan the wind rose and the 
sea raged. Our trim ship waltzed merrily on 
through billows high as young mountains and 
never at any time seemed to lose its presence 
of mind. But it made some complex motions. 
I think I discovered the Fourth Dimension, 
but I can't explain it. Some of us lost our ap- 

45 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

petites and couldn't find any that we could 
use. "Their soul abhorreth all manner of 
meat," especially if it has been stored seven 
years. Joseph stored grain seven years, but I 
do not think he tried it with spring chicken 
and eggs. 

In a storm at sea the dinner-gong sounds 
like a judgment-knell and the menu card be- 
comes a tantalus. One wearies with this ever- 
lasting swing and tremor and longs to take 
a walk out into the quiet of the old garden 
at home, or to lie down on a quiet bed. The 
sea "cannot rest." 

But, withal, the voyage has been pleasant 
and we have been safe and happy in the care 
of Him who walked on the sea. 

Now we are nearing the Old World. This 
morning we saw the sun rise on the Sunrise 
Kingdom. 

Japan is the eastern fringe of Asia. It is 
made up of five small islands and three thou- 
sand smaller ones. Its extremities extend into 
many latitudes and longitudes. Its east and 
west line is about as long as ours from Charles- 

46 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

ton to Los Angeles, and its north and south 
line is a thousand miles longer than from Du- 
luth to New Orleans. But it is not as big as 
our country. It is only a little bigger than the 
British isles and a little smaller than half our 
State of Texas. It has a summer land where 
roses bloom all winter, and a winter land, 
where snows blow all summer. 

Japan is a mass of mountains with only one- 
eighth of the surface in cultivation. On a spot 
less than one-third of the state of Iowa it 
raises food for its fifty millions of people. With 
as careful culture Iowa could feed our nation. 
All forenoon we have seen the snows glisten- 
ing on Mount Fuji. We are ready to land at 
Yohohama. Some of my friends told me I 
would find cherry-blossoms here, but there 
are snowflakes in the air. 

Yokohama, Japan, March 5, 1910. 



47 



GLIMPSES OF JAPAN 




Young women of Japan, 



V 

Glimpses of Japan 

A tourist's story may not be as correct as a 
book by one who has studied the problems of 
the land. But many of our people think new 
missionaries give the best addresses, for they 
tell of the first fresh things and give pictures 
rather than studies. George Ade's "In Pas- 
tures New" are as true to life as "Baedeker's 
Guide ' ' and more refreshing. A boy can learn 
more from the picture of an elephant in a 
minute than from a treatise on its anatomy 
in a day. Then a tourist can make enough 
mistakes to make his narrative human. 

In a glance one can get a vision of Japan 
that will last through life. In one look you 
can see the quiet waters of these inland seas, 

51 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

with their countless craft, and these fine moun- 
tain ranges with solitary, "sacred" snow- 
crowned Fuji, a hundred miles away. In a 
few days you can look in on the chief cities and 
some of the country between. In passing you 
can see clearly the mountains, valleys, forests, 
rivers, lakes, parks, fields, orchards, gardens, 
villages and homes. Half of Japan is covered 
with forests, some noble trees. But the Jap- 
anese say, " Among trees, the cherry," and 
think more of it than George Washington did. 
Japan has two hundred lakes, some of them 
beautiful. Its rivers would be longer if they 
didn't start so near the sea. Its orchards have 
many kinds of fruit, some good. Its gardens 
have much that is good for food and pleasant 
to the eyes. 

In the few days I was there I was in their 
homes and hotels and shops. I visited their 
schools and "beheld their devotions" in their 
temples. I heard their strange speech and 
saw some of their manner of life. I saw them 
awake and asleep, at their work and at their 
meals, at their sport and at their worship. I 

52 



ONCE AROUND THE WOELD 

saw their smiles and tears and heard their 
songs and shouts and groanings and weepings. 
Any day you can see their wedding and fun- 
eral procession. I tried all their modes of 
travel except their flying machines. Every- 
where you can see multitudes of men and 
women and myriads of children. No trouble 
to raise an army on most any street. And the 
people of Japan will surely get there, for so 
many men, women and children were running. 
Oh, the clatter of wooden sandals! 

I shall not try to write a history of Japan, 
for much of it was lived out before I was born. 
I shall not tell of riding out with the emperor, 
nor of our reception in the palace, for I was 
not there. I shall not write of its temples and 
shrines, for we have better ones at home. I 
shall not even try, as most tourists think they 
must, to explain the " old-time religion," of 
Japan, for I do not understand it. I do not 
think the Shintos themselves did. Surely 
their "way of the gods" was not the Way of 
God. The reason it is so hard to understand 
tJie false religions is because their devotees 

53 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

do not understand them and cannot give a 
clear statement of them. The false religions 
are' inventions with human imperfections; 
Christianity is a Divine Revelation shining out 
clearly "the light of the knowledge of the 
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." 
Only the Christian can say, "I know whom I 
have believed." 

The first thing that impresses the visitor 
is Japan's kindness to the stranger. In some 
ports bands of little children met us w T aving 
American flags. We do not thus welcome com- 
mon people of Japan. In all the ports there is, 
near by, an office of the Japan Welcome 
society, where gentlemen give you correct 
and courteous directions about points you 
wish to see, and give you a neat map of the 
city, and trace in red lines the streets upon 
which you wish to go and mark the places 
you wish to visit. Then on the street anyone 
will answer your questions pleasantly, or if 
he cannot talk English, will call some one who 
can. Some mean persons will say there is a 
money motive in all this show of kindness, but 

54 



ONOE AROUND THE WORLD 

I did not find it so. They refused money for 
small favors and said "Goody-bye" quicker 
than I could say "Thank you." One does not 
need to be "personally conducted" in Japan. 

The next thing you will notice is that a 
pleasant way to ride is in a jinrikisha. In 
earlier days one rode in a basket or chair on 
one or two poles from the shoulders of two 
or four men. But an American showed to a 
Japanese the picture of a baby carriage. The 
Japanese began to make baby carriages big 
enough to haul a man, and today in the capi- 
tal city of Tokyo, although it has fine electric 
street cars, sixty thousand "rickshaws" do a 
rushing business. They are neat and com- 
fortable, with good springs, rubber tires and 
fine upholstering. Lads fifteen to sixty years 
of age pull these and run fast; one lad to each 
carriage, or on bad roads two, one to push 
and one to pull. Some days they run fifty 
miles. 

Then you will observe that their way of 
hauling goods is different from ours. One 
little bunty horse is hitched to these great 

55 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

loads. The wagon is heavy and strong, with 
very high hind wheels and very low front 
ones, and the wheels are fastened on with 
linch pins. There is a platform bnt no wagon 
box or standards. Everything is in boxes, 
bags and baskets, and if anything needs hold- 
ing on it is roped on. Here let me say these 
people use rope for more purposes than we 
do wire. The man does not ride on his wagon, 
nor drive his horse, but always walks in front 
of his horse and leads it. The horse is not 
reined up. I saw fine two-horse teams hitched 
to carriages, but in no case to a dray or wagon; 
it was always the one, lone little horse, and 
he hauls enormous loads. In Kobe and Naga- 
saki I saw oxen, not hauling, but with great 
burdens on their backs. 

But much of the hauling is done by men. 
The common delivery wagon and small dray 
is hauled by one man. Sometimes he wears 
a breast collar and hauls from one to two tons. 
I saw but one woman in the collar. 

The carrying of smaller things, as baskets 
of fruit, vegetables and coal, is done by a pole 

53 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

on the shoulder of a man, woman or child. 
Of course in Japan the boats do most of the 
carrying, and the freight trains do their share, 
but that little horse and the people do the 
carrying on the streets. These people are 
natural sailors and swimmers and you would 
have to tie a millstone about the neck of a 
native to drown him. 

In the cities you will find some fine large 
stores, but you notice at once the multiplicity 
of little shops, thousands of them. Any little 
booth or shed or small space on the ground 
will do for a store, or bazaar, and there are 
plenty of goods and plenty of salesmen. So 
many stores are filled with toys and trinkets; 
so many bake shops and sweet shops. Rice 
stores, tea stores, meat and fish markets are 
everywhere and food is cheap. The Japanese 
must confine themselves to fish, so they call 
all kinds of animals for slaughter " mountain 
whales" and they pass for fish. 

Japan is trying to become Americanized by 
putting on some of our clothes and wanting 
to learn our language. They take a live in- 

57 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

terest in education of the modern kind. They 
provide good schools and require attendance. 
They offer special inducements to teachers. 
The Imperial University of Tokyo, with long, 
thorough courses of study, and with seven 
thousand graduates and seven thousand stu- 
dents in attendance, is a token of their inter- 
est and advancement in study. The children 
want to learn English and the American style 
of it. Here and there a thoughtful boy is 
sitting apart from his playmates with an 
American First Reader; "He shall stand 
before kings." 

Tokyo, Japan, March 7, 1910. 



58 



THOSE LITTLE JAPANESE 




EMBROIDERING IN JAPAN 




NAGASAKI HARBOR 



VI 
Those Little Japanese 

"Those little Japanese," writes one who 
thinks he knows them well, "are the most 
polished and polite people in all the world, 
but they lack in that element of trustworthi- 
ness which makes a great people." Another 
who has long lived and labored among them 
and loves them well, writes: "Truthfulness 
is not a prominent characteristic of a Jap- 
anese." 

A brilliant show of courtesy is accorded to 
them; but often coupled with the charge of 
insincerity. Many say their politeness ex- 
tends more to persons of high degree, or with 
a hope of favor and that it is not that true 
kindness which goes out freely to the humble 

61 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

and needy. Then there is a current suspicion 
that Japan feels so jubilant over triumphs in 
China and Russia that it would like to extend 
its victories into the new world, and even as 
I write there are rumors of Japanese intrigue 
in the Philippines. I do not instinctively 
admire or trust the Japanese, but after see- 
ing many thousands of them in their daily 
ways I have no serious charge to bring against 
them. There is a mystery about all alien 
races ; we can know them but in part. 

The Japanese have plain names and num- 
bers for their streets in both Japanese and 
English, and names on their public buildings 
and schools to show their purpose. Then at 
the railroad stations the directions are so 
plain that one cannot miss his train. One 
does not need to be " personally conducted" 
in Japan. A fool need not get lost. 

In our big, wild country, we need to do 
more to make the way plain to the stranger. 
In many of our railroad stations the inexperi- 
enced traveler is in mortal fear lest he miss 
his train or have to go through the hot ordeal 

62 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

of asking the agent about it. Too many of 
our streets have neither name nor number and 
too many of our public buildings show no 
sign of their purpose. A few months ago, 
in one of our home towns while waiting for 
connection, I took a stroll. I found eleven 
churches, but only two of them had any name 
and it was on the cornerstone. Not one had 
a bulletin of services; there was nothing to 
show that any of these churches had a pastor 
or a service. No invitation or welcome to 
the stranger. The church ought to make the 
way into it easier and plainer. Every true 
church ought to have three gates open to the 
North, three to the East, three to the South 
and three to the West, and an angel at every 
gate. 

I spent a Sabbath in Tokyo with the Y. M. 
C. A. people. They are doing fine work in 
these cities. I met with the soldiers, a fine- 
looking company of young men, and through 
an interpreter spoke to them of the fulness 
of the life that Jesus came to bring. Then the 
secretary told the boys they might question 

63 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

me about America and they asked about our 
schools and soldier training, and about Presi- 
dent Taft, and especially about Mr. Roose- 
velt. Mr. Roosevelt is easily the first citizen 
of the world. 

They do not seem to have much music in 
Japan, either among birds or the people. 
They have plenty of American phonographs. 
The first record I heard was, "My kitty has 
gone from her basket." 

Sunny Japan, like sunny Kansas, gets cold 
sometimes. But the people seem to be used 
to the cold, wear little clothing and have for 
fires little pots of charcoal. Barefoot boys 
scrub the stone pavements while ice glistens 
on the stones behind them. They warm their 
hands over the coals, but forget they have 
any feet. Orchards and gardens do not seem 
to mind the cold either, for trees bloom and 
gardens grow with ice on the water between 
the rows. 

But Japan is a merry land. Its people do 
their share of smiling. Every day seems to 
be good-humor day. But that about their 

64 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

babies never crying is a fiction. They scream 
and squall like ours, on occasion. Ours do 
not cry much when we carry them on our 
backs. I saw a thousand mothers carrying 
babies and only one woman carrying a dog. 

The little boys of Japan have a prematurely 
old look, maybe because their recent ances- 
tors slept several generations. But there is 
a great awakening. Education has made 
amazing progress in one generation. Schools 
are general and well attended. There is a 
multiplicity of books and periodicals. Daily 
papers are read generally. Their system of 
mail delivery, urban and rural, is more com- 
plete than ours. But while this new intelli- 
gence has weaned them from idols, it has not 
won them to God. Multitudes are trying to 
live without religion, and even statesmen are 
calling for more religion for their country's 
sake. Japan has been spoken of recently as 
a nation in search of a religion. 

Christian missions have done much. But 
mission work in Japan began at the top, and 
not among the lowly; began among the 

65 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

learned, and now the missions are languishing 
in overmuch intellectualism. 

The government schools, here as with us, 
think they have run clear away from the aca- 
demical institutions of the Church; but, here 
as there, their superiority is in externals and 
arrogance. To meet this crisis some of the 
missionaries think they must rush to the great 
German and American universities for more 
equipment. Missionaries ought to have true 
scholarship and work through the best 
schools, and they do; but those who have the 
hidden wisdom that the princes of this world 
know not need not tremble in the presence 
of mere worldly wisdom. How often a pas- 
tor wearies himself for a week putting up a 
weak metaphysical antidote for some maga- 
zine heresy which he imagines his people have 
read, while if he preached a living gospel ser- 
mon it would fortify them against all such 
vagaries. Not worldly-wise disputation, but 
the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. 
The minister and missionary is not so much 
an apologist as a herald. Not philosophy but 

66 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

tender mercy breaks the heart. Fulness of 
God's love only can satisfy the hunger of the 
heart. Nothing wins souls and holds them 
better than the simple gospel story earnestly, 
tenderly told by holy, humble, loving men and 
women. 

It will take the real gospel and the might 
of God's Spirit to save these little Japanese, 
and it will take patient training to make them 
exemplary citizens. It will take divine power 
to take the kinks out of their conscience; in- 
deed it will take, first of all, the sprinkling of 
precious blood. 

But the missionaries, who understand bet- 
ter than others the whole nature of this 
people, have the most confidence in them, and 
have the largest hope for a new and worthy 
Japan. 

When Japan woke from its three centuries 
of slumber all its old people were dead, and 
the youngsters are in charge. With this new 
inspiration the Japanese is capable, courteous, 
courageous and fiercely ambitious. Since his 
victories over China and Russia he thinks he 

67 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

is as good as anybody on earth, even an 
American. The old-time Japanese wor- 
shipped his ancestors; the Japanese of today 
worships himself. With the United States 
for a model and with his quick appreciation 
of American ideas he thinks he has discov- 
ered the secret of world-supremacy and is 
anxious to start something. But there is One 
who holds the world-supremacy, and the 
sceptre is in the nail-pierced hand, and by His 
grace the high-spirited Japanese and the 
high-spirited American shall become as a lit- 
tle child and walk in the Way of God. 
Nagasaki, Japan, March 10, 1910. 



68 



AMONG THE CELESTIALS 



vn 

Among the Celestials 

Here I am among the Celestials, but it is not 
heaven, not even Beulah-land. It is a strange 
place; strange sights, strange sounds and 
strange smells and sweet prospects, sweet 
birds and sweet flowers have all lost their 
sweetness to me. 

I cannot write as readily and positively 
about the Chinese as before coming to China. 
Old missionaries hesitate to tell of these mys- 
terious people. A missionary told me today 
he would rather take a whipping than to write 
home to the papers. So I must write quickly 
or never. 

The reason it is so hard to write is because 
this is the land of contradictions. Nothing is 

71 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

definite, accurate nor certain. What is true 
in one place is false in another; true yester- 
day and false today. The distance from Can- 
ton to Chinkiang is not the same as the dis- 
tance from Chinkiang to Canton, Euclid to 
the contrarjr. Two Hongkong dollars from 
the same mint do not have the same number 
of cents and the same dollar does not have the 
same number of cents in the evening it had 
in the morning. Scales cannot be bought 
ready made, for each man wants them made 
to order to suit his way of weighing. Even 
twins are not the same age and do not look 
alike and deny relationship. 

Then their language is so indefinite; the 
same word has different significations by 
different tones. Eor example, the same word 
may mean home or devil, and when trying to 
tell your friends you are going home, by a 
faulty intonation you may innocently give 
them a wrong impression as to your destina- 
tion. 

In coming into China from Japan one no- 
tices some resemblances and many differences 

72 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

between the Japanese and Chinese. They 
are different in color. We think they are 
both yellow, but they are really black; or 
maybe black over gold. The Japanese have 
more brown in their black, the Chinese a tinge 
of blue. But my friends never did appreciate 
my judgment on colors. 

They are different in size. The Japanese 
are not as large as their consciousness of dig- 
nity, but the Chinese are larger, some tall, 
manly fellows among them. 

They are different in dress. The Japanese 
dress neatly and evenly; the Chinese with 
very much or very little clothing. In the 
workshops and on the treadpower boats they 
wear a girdle only. More rags, nakedness 
and filth in China. 

They are different in appearance. The 
Japanese are cheerful and lively; the Chinese 
serious and subdued, more the form of a 
servant. 

They are different in manner. The Jap- 
anese are polished and polite; the Chinese 
respectful and reserved. The former are the 

73 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

French and the latter the Germans of the 
East. 

They are different in intelligence. The 
Japanese are quick and np to date; the 
Chinese may be deep, but are dull and dark. 

They are different in character. The 
Chinese are more sincere and trustworthy. 

I had but a nine days' glance at China, 
chiefly in the cities of Shanghai, Canton and 
Hongkong and some of the country along the 
rivers. The rivers of China are of surprising 
width and volume. 

As we enter Shanghai through the foreign 
concessions it looks like a fine modern city, 
but as we pass into the old Chinese city it is 
narrow and dark. But in the new part of 
the city there is hustling that would take 
Chicago hurrying to beat. In the American 
postoffice in Shanghai we can post American 
postcards and letters for one and two cents 
postage, same as at home. 

Hongkong, a better known city, is on a 
mountain island, three miles wide and twelve 
long and 2,000 feet high. A climb to the peak 

74 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

gives good exercise and a fine view of the city 
and the harbor of Kowloon. Hongkong is a 
British city with a Christian front door and 
a heathen back yard. The British buildings 
along the shore are splendid, but the Chinese 
part is huddled in a filthy mass. Up the 
mountain sides are parks and forests and 
great hotels and elegant homes. The city has 
been a leading shipping port, only recently 
surpassed by New York and London. The 
city has 320,000 people. A few are British, 
then there are many races and blends, but the 
Chinese lead with fifteen-sixteenths of the 
population. While in the city I found a 
pleasant home at the American Board mis- 
sion, where I also met some Presbyterian mis- 
sionaries and Rev. J. K. Robb and Dr. J. M. 
Wright, of the Covenanter mission. 

In these ports American tourists buy their 
curios. General Grant said one of the won- 
ders of the world was a Chinaman beating a 
Jew in a bargain. An American lady from 
the Cleveland excursion beat down one of 
these merchants on the price of a rug from 

75 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

$70 to $60, then innocently handed him $60 in 
American gold, worth that day just $140, and 
the wretch kept it. 

Hongkong, China, March 15, 1910. 



76 



CHINESE CHAEACTEEISTICS 




Injoying the sights i» China 



vni 

Chinese Characteristics 

My friends tell me that in these parts I 
have found China modernized by touch with 
western civilization and that the real China 
is in the interior. They tell of communities 
where many live in utter nakedness. They 
say there is ground for the stories about some 
of the Chinese eating strange things, that they 
eat the flesh of animals that came to their 
death by old age, disease, and even poisoning, 
without it affecting their appetite or their 
health. 

They say that the violation of every prin- 
ciple relating to food, drink, air, light, cloth- 
ing and cleanliness does not seem to affect 
health and claim that the germ theory has 

79 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

fallen down in China or these multitudes 
would be dead before sundown. 

But many good things are said of the 
Chinese, and their industry, economy and 
quiet behavior are clearly seen. Their indus- 
try is not so much interest in their work or 
hope of gain, but an everlasting scratching 
for something to eat. They are economical 
enough to eat any kind of food and eat up all 
the scraps and starve the dog and cat. A 
coolie will run home miles for dinner to save 
the excess cost on a one cent dish of rice. 
They tell of an old lady of an economical turn 
of mind who when she thought the end was 
near, hobbled wearily over to her daughter's 
home near the graveyard to lessen the ex- 
pense of her pallbearers. 

There is very little drinking among the 
Chinese. But there is much smoking, even 
among the women and babies, and the cigar- 
ette is taking up the deadly work that the 
opium pipe is laying down. Gambling is 
China's great national vice and fortune-telling 
keeps it company. There is idolatry every- 

80 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

where, idols at every corner and incense 
"under every green tree." 

China has little music. Maybe my ears are 
not attuned to Chinese melodies, but their 
best band music sounds like our worst char- 
ivari music. 

There are reports of Chinese learning and 
wisdom, but doubtless these reports are myth- 
ical. They may know something of their own 
literature, philosophy and mysteries, but they 
are back on current events, the sciences and 
mathematics. They have no use for geogra- 
phy, and think China is the whole earth. 
They know little of the world and less of 
heaven. 

But in their daily walk and work they are 
a quiet, orderly people, and there is little sug- 
gestion of such outbreaks as the Boxer rebel- 
lion. But those who know these quiet, kindly- 
looking faces best, say there sometimes lurks 
behind them an enmity cruel as death and as 
relentless. 

Missionaries who have been here a lifetime 
give me many characteristics of these people, 

81 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

but because of exceptions and contradictions, 
hesitate to combine these characteristics and 
announce a character. 

The race problem is deeper than the color 
of the skin, as we are finding out in America. 
The Chinese question is not a problem, but a 
puzzle, and the mystery deepens with study. 

But there is a real awakening and if the 
Chinese can get from under the powers and 
get some of the power of the Gospel we may 
hear of something really great. 

At a first glance at these people so sadly 
lost, the missionary proposition seems hard 
and hopeless. But the Gospel is for the lost 
and missions are successful here and many of 
the Chinese converts are earnest, clean, beau- 
tiful Christians. The answer to the mission- 
ary problem is the Chinese Christian himself. 
And as you hear him humbly tell of his salva- 
tion and boldly add, "I am for Jesus Christ,' ' 
you feel that he is real. 

To the question, "Can these dead souls live, 
can these multitudes so hopelessly lost be re- 
deemed and cleansed?" from every mission- 

82 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

field in China comes the answer, quick and 
clear, "Yea and Amen, the blood of Jesus 
Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." 

Hongkong, China, March 22, 1910. 



83 



CANTON, CHINA 



IX 
Canton, China 

In Canton, as we land at the Shameen, a 
beautiful park where the foreign concessions 
are, we think we are in a fine Christian city, 
but as we step over a little bridge into the old 
part we are sure we are in a heathen city, 
dark, dirty, and deadly. 

The streets are from three to twelve feet 
wide, averaging seven, and sometimes almost 
filled with wares from the stores. There is 
but one street for vehicles, the Bund, by the 
riverside. The houses are huddled in a mass, 
while the beautiful knolls about the city are 
given over to goat pastures and graveyards. 
The people are afraid to live outside the walls. 
My friends warned me that Canton would be 

87 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

as dangerous as Mammoth Cave without a 
guide, but I tried it and didn't get lost, hadn't 
any one to get lost from. 

I thought to spend a day in Canton with 
three million strangers, but spent two days 
with pleasant friends. I fell in with a mis- 
sionary, who took me to his home, where to 
my delight I found some young missionaries 
from Iowa. They dined me, showed me their 
mission schools and took me about the city. 

Incidentally I heard that a Mr. Collins, a 
United Presbyterian, was at the Canton 
Christian College. I took a sampan and went 
five miles down the river to the college and the 
first man I met was Mr. Collins. I found him 
to be Archie Collins, of Monmouth College, '02, 
and son of Dr. J. A. Collins. A month before 
he had cable announcement of his father's 
death, and just that evening had the home let- 
ter about it. Dear Dr. Collins, faithful and be- 
loved! Mr. Collins is the architect in charge 
of the construction of the new college build- 
ings. He entertained me royally and the next 
morning took me to the city and to the 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

American Board Mission, where I met some 
new missionaries from College Springs, Iowa. 
Then by introduction through a San Fran- 
cisco friend I spent an afternoon with Mr. 
Lind, superintendent of the Canton-Samshui 
Railroad. Mr. Lind was formerly with our 
Southern Pacific road, but seven years ago 
he came here to take charge of a little failure 
of an interurban road that was using the cast- 
off engines of a New York city elevated road. 
He rebuilt the road and extended it to Sam- 
shui, thirty-one miles, and put in double 
track. In their own shops they make great 
engines and cars that carry one hundred and 
fifty passengers each. All the machinery in 
the shops and most of the material is from 
America, but all the workmen are Chinese. 
Indeed, I think Mr. Lind is the only white 
man on the system. On this short line they 
run trains every hour, and carry an average 
of fourteen thousand passengers a day. The 
fares are first, second and third class, most 
third, and average less than three-eighths of 
& cent per mile. They pay well, too, for last 

39 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

year the expenses were only 32 per cent of the 
earnings, giving a profit of two-thirds. Thus 
they could carry passengers at one-eighth of 
a cent per mile at a profit. These are not 
Chinese figures, but American figures from 
Mr. Lind's books. The road has never had a 
wreck. 

In Canton the guide books tell us there are 
wonderful sights. I visited "The Old Water 
Clock." The "story" is that this clock, 
which has no dial to indicate the time, but a 
stick with heathen characters on it, is run by 
the vapors from an old well, which form water 
that penetrates through a few old jars and 
regulates the aforesaid stick, and that the 
old thing has kept correct time a thousand 
years. Hundreds of visitors pay daily to see 
this fake. 

Then I walked over the "Execution 
Grounds," just a common back alley, filled 
with fruit stands and fortune tellers, but 
cleared up occasionally that criminals may 
there be put to death by beheading, hanging 
or crucifixion. A cross that had been recently 

90 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

used was leaning against the wall, and in an 
old jar were a score of human skulls. I would 
have thought these grounds a fake, too, only 
an American missionary showed them to me, 
and those skulls were suggestive. The Chi- 
nese apply capital punishment to murderers, 
pirates, kidnappers, and to some thieves and 
adulterers, but as with us, mostly to adulter- 
esses. 

"The Temple of Horrors" is another much- 
visited place. The gods look worse than any 
of the people. The array of devils at their 
work of torture is sadly amusing rather than 
terrifying. But all their temples are temples 
of horror. They are the common haunt of 
gamblers, fortune tellers, beggars and thieves. 
The most of the worshippers are women; the 
men, like some of ours at home, come only 
to feasts and funerals. 

"The City of the Dead," in Canton, is not 
a cemetery, but buildings where they store 
bodies of the dead until the priests can find a 
lucky day and lucky year to bury them. If 
the corpse has rich relations it is almost as 

91 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

hard to pay its way into the grave as to pay 
its way out of purgatory. 

But if one wishes to see real things he had 
better eschew guides and guide books. He 
may find himself weeping at the wrong shrine 
sometimes, but he does that with a guide. If 
one has a friend who hasn't been too long in 
the cit^ he might go with him. But the best 
way is to take a map and walk out alone. 

The boat population of Canton is a million, 
"they say." The "sampan," a boat six feet 
wide and twenty long, partly covered with 
matting, and looking something like an old- 
time prairie schooner, is the home of a family, 
maybe, including several generations. It 
serves for porch, parlor, bedrooms, kitchen, 
cellar, back yard, and sometimes there is room 
for dog and cat and the old hen and chickens. 
Here children are born and sometimes live to 
old age, without being on land. Great wed- 
ding feasts are held on the boats at night with 
fine illuminations. Few of these people learn 
to swim and I saw only one of the million in 
the water. 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

The walls of the city are high and wide, 
cost millions, and have been a defense. Just 
before our coming there had been a collision 
between the soldiers and the police, with 
bloodshed, mutiny and execution. Some want 
to remove the city walls and put an electric 
car line in their place, but there is protest. 
But some fine day an American will run out 
some trolley lines and start a boom in lots out 
on those fine knolls. 

Canton, China, March 18, 1910. 



93 



THE CITY OF SINGAPORE 




Autos and oxen in Singapore 



The City of Singapore 

On the world-map the city of Singapore 
sits astride the equator, but really the line is 
several yards outside the corporation. But it 
is true that from no other great city on the 
globe can you get a finer view of the equator — 
a beautiful girdle, studded here and there with 
diamonds and pearls, and reaching around the 
whole earth! 

Singapore is a British crown colony, but not 
one per cent of its people is British. Singa- 
pore island, on which the city sits, is fifteen 
miles north and south and twenty-five miles 
east and west, and is at the south end of the 
Malay peninsula. On the east is the China 
sea and on the west the straits of Malacca. 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

Nearby are the islands of Sumatra, Java and 
Borneo, and not far away are the Philippines. 
The climate is mild but not hot, as we might 
suppose. The highest record of temperature 
is ninety-two degrees. Last year the highest 
was eighty-eight, lowest seventy-three and 
average eighty. Not much difference between 
January and July. Vegetable growth is lux- 
uriant, for there is plenty of sunshine and it 
rains nearly every day, and things grow night 
and day the year round. The harbor is sev- 
eral miles long and full of shipping. The new 
part of the city is elegant and many homes 
have ample grounds. The English officials 
have immense residences, partly for use, and 
partly for that show of wealth and power 
which helps them rule. The schools are in 
parks and look very attractive. The churches 
are not set in gingerly against other build- 
ings, but have lawns and trees about them. 
The hauling is done by oxen, mostly great 
white fellows, which draw big two- wheel carts. 
The people ride in electric trains, pony ghar- 
rys, automobiles and rickshaws. Ancient oxen 

98 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

and American autos run side by side and the 
autos beat every time. 

The markets and bazaars are interesting in 
their products and in- the throngs that visit 
them. The climate requires little clothing 
and some do not live up to the requirements, 
many little children wearing a necklace only. 

The city is on a boom with the rubber busi- 
ness and many poor people are going broke 
on rubber stocks, same as in America. The 
finest thing in the city is just outside of it, 
the great botanical garden, big as an Ameri- 
can township and filled with everything that 
is beautiful in plants, flowers and trees. Here 
are fountains, brooks, waterfalls, lakes, 
bridges, arches, flower-beds, lawns, tangled 
thickets and deepest, darkest forests. If you 
want to see tropical luxuriance gaze on it 
here. 

The city has fine schools and the English 
language is taught exclusively, although most 
of the pupils are Chinese. 

The Y. M. C. A. is putting up a fine build- 
ing at a cost of $60,000. The Australian 

99 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

S. D. A. mission lodged me three days cour- 
teously. Here I met Rev. and Mrs. Votaw, 
missionaries in Singapore. Mrs. Votaw is the 
sister of Mr. Harding, who aspires to the 
governorship of Ohio. 

The Presbyterian Church of England has 
had a self-supporting congregation here for 
more than fifty }^ears. This congregation sus- 
tains several missions and schools. 

The American Methodists have a good con- 
gregation and fine church and parsonage in 
the midst of a pretty park. They also have a 
fine school with over eleven hundred boys and 
girls in attendance. I spent the morning vis- 
iting various grades in this school, from the 
infant class to the seniors. The teachers are 
mostly short-term teachers from America, but 
a good many are native teachers trained in 
this school. Bo} 7 s and girls of many races are 
in this school, but they soon learn the English 
language. I heard the little children learning 
to read much as I did some time ago. I heard 
the juniors recite in Bible. Each student read 
a verse and explained it and their understand- 

100 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

ing of Bible facts and principles was wonder- 
ful. Then the teacher gave them a talk on the 
lesson. Many of them are led to become trne 
Christians in this school. I met a young Chi- 
nese student at a fountain and as he handed 
me a cup of cold water I noticed that he could 
speak English and I wondered if I might not 
tell him of Jesus. Just then he looked at me 
pleasantly and asked, "Do you stand for Jesus 
Christ?" He got there first. 

In the evening I met some of the students 
in the parks and they were anxious to ask me 
about America, and were ready to tell me of 
their new faith. They told me of their temp- 
tations, and of their purposes, and of their 
daily reading of the Bible, and their morning 
and evening prayers, and how they asked God 
to send his Holy Spirit to help them live like 
Jesus. In speaking of their religious stand- 
ing they said, "I am for Jesus Christ." 

Singapore, S. S., March 31, 1910. 



101 



KANGOON, BUKMAH 



XI 

Rangoon, Burmah 

Twenty-one miles from the sea, up the 
Rangoon river, we find the city of Rangoon, 
the capital of Burmah, with a population of 
over 300,000. It is a beautiful city and has 
more breathing room than any other city I 
have found in the East. The streets are very 
wide and have fine shade trees on either side. 
There are many parks, indeed the city is one 
vast park, and looks like those paradise cities 
in southern California. It has many attrac- 
tions, but here, as elsewhere, I do not find 
buildings nor scenery the chief attraction, but 
the people themselves. They all seem to be 
on the streets at once, a swarm of men, women 
and children, in gay colors, white, scarlet and 
pink predominating. I should have men- 

105 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

tioned black, too, for that is the general color 
of the people, and their gay clothing covers 
but little of their bodies. The working men 
wear loincloths only and many of the little 
children wear only the same garments they 
had on when they first came through the blue 
sky. 

The country round about is very produc- 
tive, and here I saw the first harvest fields and 
the great stacks of rice straw, thicker than 
our straw stacks in the month of August. The 
markets and bazaars are overflowing and the 
city looks like it was prosperous. The public 
buildings are fine and are generally in the 
midst of a park. 

The city is notable for its Buddhist shrines 
and is much like Athens, when Paul visited it, 
"wholly given to idolatry." Here is the 
greatest Buddhist temple in the world, the 
Shwe Dagon Pagoda. As a work of art in the 
building wonders of India, it ranks next to 
the Taj Mahal, which crowns all. It is in the 
midst of a large park and its pedestal or plat- 
form covers several blocks. The building is 

106 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

large, not to accommodate worshippers, but 
to display its gods. It is costly and magnifi- 
cent. So many of these temples have only 
tinsel and gilt, like the band wagon and chari- 
ots in the early-day circus; but this one has 
much real gold and precious stones. The ap- 
proaches and corridors are places of merchan- 
dise and dens of thieves. The temple has 
more gods than worshippers, and it has more 
dead saints on its walls than living ones in its 
walks. There must be hundreds of gods, for 
in one side-show I counted forty-eight, vary- 
ing in size from an infant to an elephant. The 
Burmese gods have pleasanter countenances 
than the Chinese gods, but they have about 
them so much litter and grease and ashes from 
the offerings that they look untidy. 

Just before I visited the temple a friend 
had given me a little idol, a miniature of Bud- 
dha, as big as a man's hand and carved out of 
marble. I carried it in my hand as I walked 
up the temple steps, and the little fellow took 
a notion to slip out of my hand and fell on the 
stone step and broke off his head. A kind- 

107 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

hearted native offered to get me some "medi- 
cine" to stick its head on again, but I did not 
want a god who could not walk up the temple 
steps without breaking his neck, and who had 
not power to restore his own head. That he 
fell to his destruction on those temple steps 
I regarded as a good omen. 

There has been some revival in Buddhist 
circles recently on account of the unearthing 
of sundry additional parts of Buddha's anat- 
omy, a tooth and toenail, I believe. They 
were brought to this shrine. I did not see 
them, but I saw one of his shoes. 

The worshippers here are more devout than 
in China. Bowing low, with a flower in their 
clasped hands, and their eyes fixed steadily 
on the dead eyes of their god, they pour out 
earnest words with a devotion that is pitiful. 
So many of the worshippers are old, poor, 
withered mothers, speaking their last words 
into ears that cannot hear, and casting their 
last look into eyes that cannot pity. On their 
faces were looks of indescribable sadness and 
hopelessness. 

108 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

Burmah has had faithful missionaries since 
the Judsons took up their work here, ninety- 
seven years ago. The Church of England, 
the American Methodists, and others, have 
taken up the work in later years. "But what 
are they among so many?" Millions of them 
are there who sit in darkness, have never seen 
the Great Light, and they are wandering on 
into a night that knows no morning. 

Rangoon, Burmah, April 7, 1910. 



109 



EASTERN GATEWAYS OF INDIA 



XII 
Eastern Gateways of India 

India's front door used to be on the north 
at Khyber Pass, but now it has doors on every 
side and its chief portals are at Bombay on 
the west and Calcutta on the east. 

But two thousand miles from Calcutta we 
find India's eastern gateway on the sea. Sin- 
gapore, the Equator city, is the western gate- 
way to China, and the eastern gateway to 
India. 

Early Sabbath morning, April 10, 1910, I 
first saw the green groves and glad harvest 
fields of India and was glad. I was glad to 
see the bountiful harvests and glad to be in 
the land of our missions. In this land one of 
my dearest friends had given her life even 

113 



©NOE AROUND THE WORLD 

unto death, and one from my own heart and 
home had taken up the work that was laid 
down. 

Nearly all day Sabbath we steamed up the 
Hooghly river to Calcutta. "Calcutta, the 
City of Palaces!" But like all cities with a 
million people, it does not have enough pal- 
aces to go round. When we think of Calcutta, 
we think of the Black Hole of Calcutta, where 
a century and a half ago 157 British soldiers 
were infamously smothered. A small enclos- 
ure near the new postoffice marks the spot 
where they died and across the street a monu- 
ment marks their common grave and perpetu- 
ates their names. 

Monday I took the first train north. I was 
glad to be on a car instead of a ship. I found 
it is 15,318 miles from Monmouth to Sialkot. 
Passing through the waterless wastes of New 
Mexico and Arizona I thought that old geo- 
graphical dictum, "One-fourth of the earth's 
surface is land and three-fourths water," was 
a little watered, but after sailing over more 
than 10,900 miles of oceans between San Fran- 

114 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

cisco and Calcutta, I decided there's water 
enough to meet the conditions. 

I used to suppose that if I was across the 
Pacific I would be almost to India. But from 
San Francisco to Yokohama is 5,400 miles, 
and from Yokohama to Calcutta is 5,400 miles. 
From Yokohama to Hongkong is 2,001 miles. 
From Hongkong to Singapore is 1,437 miles. 
From Singapore to Calcutta is 2,000 miles. 

After fasting forty days on steamer storage 
supplies it is refreshing to get on land and 
find something to eat. That festive first-class 
menu-card had shylocked me out of fourteen 
pounds of flesh. A steamer dining table looks 
like a feast of delights, but is as disappointing 
as a mock banquet. But I had a real vacation 
on the sea, the first one since I was a baby. 
Once in my pastorate at Amity I tried to take 
a three weeks' vacation, but preached every 
Sabbath. On this trip I have preached only 
half time. 

Seventy-five days from Monmouth to Sial- 
kot; forty-two traveling, thirty-three visiting. 
Fifty-eight days without a letter! When one 

115 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

waits that long he is anxious to know whether 
the message will be of life or of death. 
Twenty-four cheerful letters awaited me. 
Sixty days without seeing a familiar face! 
Then, by Heaven's kind decree, I looked first 
upon the face I came to see. My daughter 
met me at Lahore and after a race on that 
long platform we came together in swift and 
sweet collision. It was worth coming fifteen 
thousand miles to have a part in that meeting. 

"I knew not the sweetness of the fountain 
Till I found it flowing in the desert: 
Nor the value of a friend 
Till the meeting in a lonely land." 

Sialkot, India, April 13, 1910. 



116 



INDIA, OUB OWN INDIA 



' f^ — 


■■* «• 


■ .■.•>5E 




Ml 





'Two and two before His face into 
every city and place." 



XIII 
India, Our Own India 

In a few hours we were at home with friends 
in Sialkot, Calcutta to Sialkot in forty-four 
hours. That is quicker than Dr. Gordon made 
it in 1855. It took him one hundred and sixty- 
eight days. 

After sitting down at the table for two 
months with strangers it is a rare joy to sit 
down at the supper-table with friends. It 
was a holiday indeed to sit down at the cheer- 
ful table of Rev. and Mrs. T. E. Holliday. 

But I did not come to India at the right 
time. Some of the missionaries thought I 
had better run back and come two years later. 
Some of them said I should have come three 
months earlier and seen the work in camp; 

119 



ONCE ABOUND THE WORLD 

others said I should have eome three months 
later and gone with them to the hills. 

Some of them wanted me to attend Assiut 
Commencement in July when it is not, in- 
stead of May when it is. Some of them 
wanted me to run on quick and skip Egypt 
and Palestine and reach the Edinburgh Con- 
ference, but I would rather attend a country 
school picnic. Some of them said that in my 
short visit I had seen nothing and charged me 
to tell no man. Some said I could not under- 
stand the real situation any more than a 
graven image can and solemnly warned me 
not to try to write for the papers. Other some 
said, " Write the things you have seen and 
heard and go home and shout for India." But 
they all gave me angelic welcome and united 
in giving me a merry whirl for fifteen days 
and nights. They fed me five times a day 
and slept me fourteen times a week. If I had 
slept all they wanted me to I wouldn't have 
been awake yet. If I had eaten all they 
wanted me to this letter would have been my 
obituary. 

120 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

My daughter chaperoned me and we visited 
ten of our twelve mission stations in a very 
complete way! It was something of a tri- 
umphal journey. Whether we arrived at mid- 
day or midnight the chief man of the mission 
met us at the city gates with his chariots and 
attendants. 

We started in at Sialkot, as the Gordons 
did in the beginning. Here we found the Hol- 
lidays and with them four new missionaries, 
Mr. and Mrs. J. Gr. Campbell and Misses Roma 
Beatty and Elizabeth Lawrence. The Chris- 
tian Training Institute is doing great work, 
but the boys' dormitory is not much better 
than the one at Monmouth. Dr. T. L. Scott 
is very busy with both the seminary and the 
city schools, and his wife was using a crutch 
because she had driven too fast from church 
the Sabbath before. Miss Moore is in district 
work and Miss McCahon in city missionary 
work. Misses Fannie Martin and Flora 
Jamieson have the girls' boarding school and 
are doing a world of good. Dr. Maria White 
has charge of the hospital and is healing more 

121 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

people in a minute than Mrs. Eddy ever did. 
The amount of work done by our doctors in 
India is amazing. Any earnest young doctor 
can come here and find a million patients 
waiting for him. Miss McConachie, a bright 
young nurse from Ireland, has come to help 
Dr. White. So many of our missionaries had 
recently started home, the McKelveys, Drs. 
Simpson and Gilbakian, Misses Anna Hamil- 
ton, Minger, McConnell, Cleland and little 
Lois McClure. Then Mrs. E. E. Campbell had 
just gone to the heavenly home a few days 
before. 

To Zafarwal from Sialkot is a delightful 
drive of twenty-seven miles, southeast, two 
rivers to ford. Here are the Nesbitts and 
Misses Nancy Hadley and Belle Hamilton. 
The other missionaries call Zafarwal "The 
Jungle," but I think it is one of the loveliest 
places in all the mission. A fine old mission 
home, apart from the village, in a great grove 
of eucalyptus trees, with orchard and well 
and garden and plenty of flowers, and great 
wheat fields all about, and one hundred and 

122 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

twenty-five miles away a fine view of the 
snowy Himalayas. Then here at Zafarwal, 
and at Zafarwal only, yon can visit that dear 
old Saint Kanaya, the Village Lambarder of 
whom Dr. Gordon wrote so mnch in "Our 
India Mission.' ' In a pleasant little Indian 
home, near by, live Kanaya and his good wife, 
both of them past ninety. I visited them twice 
and saw the glad light on their faces as they 
told me, through an interpreter, the glad 
story of our India mission from the beginning. 
They said "God sent His prophets to tell us 
of Jesus — and now the glad sound is filling 
all India." I would rather visit them than 
be received by the king — or be denied an 
audience with the Pope! 

Another drive of seventeen miles from Za- 
farwal southwest brings us to Pasrur, where 
labor Dr. Samuel Martin, his daughters, Jose- 
phine and Mary, the Brandons and Miss Mary 
Kyle. In this place souls are flocking to the 
Saviour like doves flock to their windows. 
Over 1,200 members were added to this church 
the past year. It will take a good many of 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

our synods at home to do as well. Multitudes 
are ready to come if some one would come and 
lead them in. Between Pasrur and Sialkot, 
at Bawa Lakhan, we found Brother J. W. 
Ballentine and his delightful family, happy 
in their new home and busy in their good 
work. Near by we visited the leper colony, 
which is in Mr. Ballentine 's care. Lepers are 
a sad sight, but Jesus thought tenderly of 
them. In a little cemetery near Pasrur a 
monument marks the resting place of Miss 
Edith M. Fulton. 

At Rawal Pindi we found more than we 
expected, a large city and the largest military 
establishment outside of England. We found 
a great missionary work, too. Rawal Pindi 
College is one of our great United Pres- 
byterian colleges, and is doing big work with 
little money. At Rawal Pindi we met E. L. 
Porters, the Maxwells, Pickens, Mr. Merriam, 
Mrs. McClure and Miss Josephine White. 
Beautiful drives about the city, miles of roses. 

At Jhelum we were welcomed by Rev. E. E. 
Campbell and Misses Morrison and Gordon, 

124 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

Miss Gordon is from our own Iowa. Brother 
Campbell was going on bravely with his work 
in the Summer Bible School, "As sorrowful, 
yet always rejoicing." Here at Jhelum is our 
Good Samaritan Hospital, and near by the 
grave of Dr. Sophie E. Johnson. 

At Gujranwala we had a good time with 
the Crows and McArthurs and Misses McCul- 
lough and Margaret Wilson. I felt a special 
interest in Miss Wilson, for I know her good 
father and mother and have known Margaret 
herself since she was a child. The Boys' In- 
dustrial School and the Girls' Training School 
are the forces that will make a new India. 
Some one ought to send over a new home for 
Miss Wilson's bright girls in the training 
school. 

At Sangla Hill we found a happy quartette 
doing a great work, Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell 
and Misses Kate Hill and Lena Brotherston. 
Mr. Caldwell and I had not met since we 
parted at Monmouth as students, thirty-four 
years ago, but we took up the lines as if it 
had been only thirty-four minutes. Mrs. 

125 



ONCE AROUND THE WOELD 

Caldwell is a good missionary and a good 
home maker and good cook. Misses Hill and 
Brotherston are not twins, but they work well 
together. Mr. Caldwell and Miss Hill took 
us up to the top of Sangla Hill and showed us 
their kingdom. We could see 100,000 acres 
of good wheat and a bigger spiritual harvest 
field. These four workers have a parish of 
25 by 36 miles, with 500 villages, in 115 of 
which are Christians. Sangla Hill church has 
2,000 members. Our biggest United Presby- 
terian churches are not in Pittsburg. 

We spent a happy Sabbath at Lyalpur with 
Rev. J. H. Martins and Misses Spencer and 
Bennett. I had been anxious to see my 
" twin-daughter," Miss Hazel Bennett, and 
found her well worthy the relationship. The 
Martins are happy in having three sons in 
Muskingum College, and three bright daugh- 
ters and a son who intend to go to Muskin- 
gum after while. 

At Gurdaspur we met Rev. and Mrs. D. 
R. Gordon and Misses Corbett and Dickson. 
David Gordon is one of the second generation 

126 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

and he reaches out with easy swing to 700 vil- 
lages and gathers many into the bundle of 
life. If I were a child again I think I would 
try and grow into a missionary. 

At Pathankot we met a fine group of 
friendly missionaries, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. 
Stewart, Misses Mary and Bessie Campbell 
and Miss Schwab. And Misses Cynthia and 
Rosa Wilson were kind to drive in from Mad- 
hoper to meet us. They look happy, and they 
ought to. The Stewarts have as pretty a baby, 
Genevieve, as some parents who have a dozen 
children. Miss Mary Campbell has the Ava- 
lon Girls' High School, and it is doing well, 
but it needs so much a new building, and it 
will be a pleasing gift, pleasing to the Lord if 
some one will send them a new building. The 
girls are praying for it. 

We are sorry that we could not visit the 
friends at Khangah Dogran, and were much 
grieved that we could not see Sargodha, "the 
best station in the mission." But at Jhelum 
we met two angels of the Sargodha church, 
Dr. Brown and Miss Emma Dean Anderson. 

127 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

From every station I could have written of 
others " whose names are in the book of life," 
the " fellow laborers," a long list of faithful 
native workers. It was a joy to meet them 
and find them so much interested in the work. 
I wish I could bring a company of them home 
and show what fine teachers and elders and 
preachers these India converts make. 

Pathankot, India, April 26, 1910. 



128 



TWO INDIA HARVESTS 



XIV 
Two India Harvests 

India has a bumper wheat crop this year, 
"best in twenty years," say some of the 
people. Since the early days on the prairie 
I have not seen bigger wheat fields nor better 
wheat. North India is one vast wheat field. 

But here, as at home, the profits of the crop 
go to the speculators and the poor pay famine 
prices. Most of this wheat goes to England 
and most of these people live on something 
cheaper. But the abundant harvest brings 
some good cheer. 

In three thousand miles of travel among the 
wheat fields I have seen but one reaping ma- 
chine and that was on the Agricultural Col- 
lege farm at Lyalpur. It was an old-fashioned 

131 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

i 'dropper" like we used in the sixties and was 
drawn by a yoke of oxen. Not anywhere 
have I heard the music of the threshing ma- 
chine, for everything is done in the old way. 
In preparing the ground it is plowed once or 
twice by a little wooden plow drawn by a 
yoke of oxen. The plow has but one handle 
and the man holds it in his left hand, and 
holds the ox-gad in his right hand and yells 
and swears continually. They smooth the 
ground by dragging a square piece of wood, 
about the size of a railroad tie, over it with 
those same oxen. The wheat is sown by hand. 
To cover it they sometimes plow it again and 
smooth it with that drag. When harvest 
comes men reap the wheat with sickles. They 
sit on their feet as they reap. Women gather 
the stalks into piles but rarely bind them. 
Women gleaners, Ruth-like, follow after and 
pick up every straw. 

It is threshed on a threshing floor of smooth 
ground by the treading of oxen, cows and 
calves, and winnowed by throwing it up in 
the air and letting the wind blow the chaff 

132 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

away. Then the grain is divided into many 
parts for the many different owners of it. 
When a man rents the ground and the oxen 
and plow and borrows the seed he doesn't 
have a very big share in the grain. 

The rice crop, too, is abundant, and India's 
millions could be fed if there was a fair dis- 
tribution. Harvest wages are high this year, 
twice as high as they used to be. A good 
hand can get 33 cents a day if he boards him- 
self. 

But India has a greater harvest, ' ' The field 
is the world; the good seed are the children 
of the Kingdom. The harvest is the end of 
the world, and the reapers are the angels." 
In that hasty stroll which I took through our 
mission field I could readily see that the har- 
vest is plenteous and the laborers are few. 
Sometimes at home telegrams are sent to rush 
harvest hands into Kansas or the Dakotas, for 
the harvest is wasting. But here a more pre- 
cious harvest is wasting and we ought to rush 
the harvesters in. It is easy to see that the 
missionaries are working with their might, 

133 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

one sometimes doing the work of two or three, 
and hurrying like we do in the harvest time. 
I find it as a missionary once wrote me, 
"When we go out into the villages we can 
only reach a few of the many ; it is like saving 
a few in the lifeboat and leaving the rest in 
the waves; it is like rescuing a few from a 
burning building and leaving the rest in the 
flames." 0, hurry! 

Everywhere I found our missionaries cheer- 
ful and hopeful. They believe in their mis- 
sion and are sure they will win. They never 
think of giving up. If they come home they 
want to hurry back. 

What is the charm of the missionary life? 
It is not in the climate; we have better at 
home. It is not in their missionary homes; 
we have better at home. It is not in the food 
they eat ; we have better at home. It is not in 
the easy work, for they work harder than we. 
It is not in the care-free life, for their burdens 
are heavy and their perplexities many. May- 
be the charm is in that "foreign mail" which 
cheers them so much every week. We ought 

134 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

to send it faithfully. Maybe it is that near- 
ness to the throne which they cherish when 
far from home. The charm is in the work 
itself, in the joys of soul winning, in rejoicing 
with angels over the penitent; in the vision 
of a redeemed India ready to be presented to 
God. 

It is easy to see that the native Christians 
love and trust the missionaries. They look 
to them for counsel and comfort somewhat as 
children look to parents. It is almost pa- 
thetic to see old men and women trusting so 
implicitly the young missionaries. The con- 
verts are sometimes very trying and disap- 
pointing, but the loving confidence of most of 
them is sweet. 

I find, too, that the native Christians know 
very much about us, their friends in the home 
church, and that they have a real affection for 
us. They are much better posted about 
America than many of the English in India 
are. An English soldier who said he was a 
graduate of the home schools, asked me if the 
United States is in America. Many in India 

135 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

confuse Africa and America. But our native 
Christians know something of the United 
States and say, "Give my salaam to your 
people." "Write my salaam to your people 
at home." 

Of the problem of English rule and India's 
aspirations for self-rule I will let those who 
understand it write. 

But a wayfarer can see some things. India 
is England's servant. These simple people 
seem to yield cheerful service and tribute, but 
how they endure the brainless impudence of 
some of these English officials is beyond un- 
derstanding. Such Englishmen would get the 
larger part of their being, their vanity, 
knocked out of them in three minutes in 
America. I'm glad yet we licked the British 
at Bunker Hill and all along the line. 

India is better ruled than ever before, and 
much bettter than they could rule themselves 
yet; but this English domination is needlessly 
expensive and oppressive, and English life 
here is wickedly extravagant and haughty. 

Although I saw India in the gladness of 

136 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

harvest time, the plague was raging. The 
first day we were at Zafarwal four died in the 
village, and over five thousand deaths a day 
in India were reported that week from the 
plague. 

One day Mr. Nesbitt had a heathen give me 
an exhibition of his plowing. He could not 
get his oxen started without much swearing 
and turning to apologize, explained that he 
was only a farmer and should be expected to 
swear. We have such heathen farmers at 
home who swear as they plow. 

One morning we visited a village school 
and the teacher brought the pupils, seventeen 
boys and a girl, out of the little coop of a 
school house and had them sit down on the 
ground in the sunshine. They studied out 
loud like our grandparents did a hundred 
years ago. Then different ones arose and 
gave an exhibition of their reading. They had 
a writing lesson on little boards which they 
used for slates. 

One evening I was at a reception given by 
the native Christians to an American visitor. 

137 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

The old people and the children came, some 
babies, some people over ninety. They sang 
Psalms heartily, and prayed, and recited 
poems, and asked the American for a speech 
and replied to it most courteously, and then 
distributed more sweet things to eat than we 
have at an American reception. 

At Jhelum I saw the native minister preach- 
ing in a bazaar. An hour is spent in singing 
and preaching, and a good crowd quickly 
gathers and much good seed is sown. We 
don't do enough week day and wayside 
preaching at home. 

In Sialkot I attended two prayer meet- 
ings — real prayer meetings — not debating 
clubs nor literary societies like we sometimes 
have in the prayer meeting room at home. 
In these missionary prayer meetings they 
seem to have so many definite needs and re- 
quests, and pressing troubles and sorrows, 
and causes for thanksgiving, and then kneel- 
ing before God they press these claims in 
many earnest prayers. Our missionaries and 
I think our native Christians are much more 

138 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

given to earnest prayer than our ministers 
and people at home. They seem to need more 
help in the midst of their burdens and 
sorrows. 

In every missionary's home I found de- 
lightful family worship both morning and 
evening. And not only praying, but praising. 
The whole household gathered. A Psalm was 
sung heartily. A chapter read, verse about, 
around the circle, old and young reading. 
Then earnest prayer. In the houses of the 
native Christians, too, I heard the song in 
family worship. How I wish more of our 
people, and ministers' families, would sing 
in family worship at home! So many fami- 
lies cultured in music give none of the glory 
of it to God in family worship. We are not 
doing right by our songs. We are not doing 
right by the Lord. We would have more of 
the joy of salvation in our homes if we sung 
more of these glad songs in family worship. 

Two Sabbath days in our mission; one at 
Zafarwal, one at Lyalpur; fine little congre- 
gations ; young and old attentive and reverent 

139 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

and loud and joyous in their singing. In one 
church I had the privilege of speaking 
through an interpreter, in the other I spoke 
"in my own tongue," wherein I was born." 

One would think that these missionaries 
would grow old quickly. But Dr. Martin at 
75 swings the great work like a youth. And 
I met three of our fine old ladies who are 
over 180 years old and have together seen 
over 100 years of missionary service, and are 
very spry yet.' 

How our India mission is growing. Found- 
ed 55 years ago by three missionaries, now 
we have 90 missionaries and hundreds of na- 
tive helpers. It was a long time before the 
mission had any converts, now we have in the 
mission 22,000 members of our United Pres- 
byterian Church, and many self-supporting 
congregations. In three years our member- 
ship has doubled, and the future is bright 
with promise. As bread satisfies hunger and 
water quenches thirst the Gospel meets the 
need of India. 

We ought to take new courage and rush 

140 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

new forces of missionaries into these promis- 
ing fields. So many of our people are look- 
ing for investments in California and Canada 
— but India is better. I believe India mis- 
sions are a better investment than American 
lands. "I hae tried baith." And bright 
young people looking for a "mission," turn 
your eyes to our foreign missions. You will 
find hard, glorious work and a crown at the 
end. 

I'll not remember India as the land of 
thirst and famine and plague, but as the land 
of happy harvest fields and fruitful mission 
fields. Good-bye to the "Taj Mahal" and the 
" Towers of Silence") No, I'll not leave my 
greetings to these things which savor of 
death, I'll leave them with the wheatfields 
and missionfields, for I shall find some of 
their gladness and fruitage in Heaven. 

As I landed in India the Calcutta Sabbath 
evening church bells were ringing. As I 
sailed from India the Bombay Sabbath morn- 
ing church bells were ringing. As I came to 
the ship in the Bowen M. E. Memorial church 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

they were singing the "Old, old story," as the 
Methodists used to sing it in "protracted 
meetings" in Iowa in the early days. The 
"old, old story" will yet win the dominion in 
India. 

Eed Sea, May 10, 1910. 



142 



A MEMOEIAL OF THEM 



XV 

A Memorial of Them 



"Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His 
saints. ' ' 

"Out of the pain of night-watching removed 

Into the sleep that God gives His beloved, 
Into the dawn of a glad resurrection, 
Into the house of unbroken affection." 



In the corner of the mission-yard at 
Sialkot is a little cemetery where rest the 
bodies of many of those who have died in our 
India mission. It is a pretty spot enclosed 
by a stone wall and within this the graves of 
the missionaries and their children are sur- 
rounded by a metal railing. Friendly trees 
and everblooming flowers make it a cheerful 
place. This sacred spot is dear to many 

145 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

friends and to the Church and to God. Some 
of the precious names I read are: 

Rev. D. S. Lytle. 

Susie A. Young. 

Rev. Robert Reed McClure. 

Alice, daughter of Robert and Alice 
McClure. 

Joie L. Fortney, wife of Rev. E. L. Porter, 
and their little baby boy. 

Infant daughter of Rev. and Mrs. E. L. 
Porter. 

Mary, wife of Rev. J. S. Barr, D. D. 

John Glencarne, son of Rev. and Mrs. T. E. 
Holliday. 

Paul Nelson, son of Rev. and Mrs. W. B. 
Anderson. 

Gerald Howard, son of Rev. and Mrs. W. B. 
Anderson. 

Lydia Lucretia, wife of Rev. Samuel 
Martin. 

To some circle of friends each of these 
graves is specially dear. The stone of me- 
morial at which I lingered had on it these 
words : 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

SUSIE A., 

Daughter of 

JAMES AND JESSIE YOUNG. 

Born in Tama County, Iowa, U. S. A., 

October 21, 1868; 

Died in Sialkot, India, 

January 15, 1908. 

"She rests from her labors 

and her works do follow her." 

The first day I preached at "Amity," then 
in a little schoolhouse, I met Susie Young. 
She was nine years old. When she was 
twelve I received her into the church. She 
was a great friend and counsellor at Amity 
Parsonage. Soon she went away to college 
and became a teacher. At twenty-two she 
went out to our India mission. After seven- 
teen earnest years she was called to rest. 

147 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

She was a winning missionary and a winning 
intercessor at the Throne. By such precious 
lives and precious deaths India will be won 
to Christ. 

For thirty years she called me her pastor, 
although most of the time I was her pastor by 
correspondence. During her first term her 
eyes failed and she had to come home on a 
furlough, and for a time feared she could 
never return to the mission-field. But she 
never gave up and one day she handed me this 
little poem, which had in it a prophecy: 



'I asked for strength, for with the noon-tide heat 
I fainted, while the reapers, singing sweet, 

Went forward with the ripened sheaves I could not bear. 
Then came the Master, with his blood-stained feet, 

And lifted me with sympathetic care; 
Then on His arm I leaned till all was done, 
And I stood with the rest at set of sun, 
My task complete." 



"And Jesus answered and said, Verily I 
say unto you, there is no man that hath left 
house, or brethren or sisters, or father or 
mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my 

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ONCE ABOUND THE WORLD 

sake and the gospel's, but he shall receive a 
hundred-fold now in this time, houses, and 
brethren, and sisters, and mothers and chil- 
dren, and lands, with persecutions; and in the 
world to come eternal life." 

Sialkot, India, April 14, 1910. 



149 



INDIA TO EGYPT 




bo 

H 



XVI 
India to Egypt 

Three thousand miles, through the Arabian 
and Red Seas, from Bombay to Suez. To 
Africa we took the steamer "Africa," a small, 
pretty boat. Friends had promised me a hot 
time on the Red Sea, but there was a cool 
breeze and delightful nights. In Singapore 
and Rangoon, where it was to be scorching, 
I found pleasant weather. In the Punjab, 
by a pleasant providence, I found spring 
showers and real April weather. Only in 
Calcutta, and only for an hour, I found a tem- 
perature of a hundred. 

On the "Africa" we found superior food, 
but it was hard to get at, for the waiters could 
not understand the passengers and no one 

153 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

could read the menu card or give the inter- 
pretation thereof. Then there was more 
drinking than eating, more bottles than 
plates on the table. The guzzling of beer and 
the gulping of wine were terrific. Some of 
the company was bad. On the Pacific and 
on the China seas I had seen some vain crea- 
tures, but these royal English, on their way 
home from India, in the balance laid are 
lighter than vanity. They are a good example 
of low-down high society. Both men and 
women spent the time chiefly in smoking, 
drinking and gambling with bottles and 
boodle before them. The more the women 
could act like bad men the happier they 
seemed to be. Their empty chatter would en- 
courage a monkey. In the evening they 
showed themselves. Innocent as in Eden, 
"And they were naked and were not 
ashamed!" The men's full dress consisted, 
distinctively, in a flaming shirtfront, a red 
rose and a red nose. The English representa- 
tives in heathen lands complicate the mission- 
ary problem. Of course they were but a part 

154 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

of the company. On every ship we may find 
modest, beautiful people, God's own children 
with light on their faces. 

At Suez we see stretches of sand and a 
canal and a palm tree. We know we are in 
Egypt, for we see its ready representatives, 
the donkey and the camel. 

The dragomen know us from afar and give 
us a wild welcome. Doubtless they are the 
most insistent and insolent beggars on the 
earth, unless it be their twin brothers, the 
boatmen at Jaffa. When they, meet us they 
tell us that our countenance is blessed and 
that we must be fresh arrivals from heaven, 
and when they leave us they tell us to hide 
our faces and hurry off to a land that is hotter 
than Egypt. With heart-breaking entreaty 
they lay hold of our luggage and ask to carry 
it for nothing, then charge three prices and 
ask extra gifts. The best way to put them 
to shame is to turn beggar and get there first 
by asking for everything they have, or to give 
them a dummy piece of discarded baggage 

155 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

and ask them to carry it to a hotel two miles 
away where you never intend to go. 

We take the evening train to Cairo. The 
new moon glances in at the window. We 
have come to the Dark Continent and find a 
land of light. The sun shines all day, the new 
moon lights the evening, myriads of stars 
gleam at midnight and the comet lights up 
the early morning. As we go we think of 
three names memorable in Egypt: the Child 
Jesus, who for a time found refuge here from 
the wrath of Herod; the child Joseph, the 
slave, who rose up to feed the multitudes, and 
the child Moses, who rose up to be the great 
emancipator. God had a gracious purpose 
in this childhood visit of His Son into Egypt. 
At Cairo I found welcome entertainment for 
three days and nights in the gracious home 
of Dr. and Mrs. Watson, where a few weeks 
before Colonel Roosevelt had found such de- 
lightful hospitality. I met in that home many 
pleasant friends I had never seen before. Mr. 
Coventry, who met me at the midnight train, 
I found to be a near cousin. Miss Dysart, 

156 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

who took me to the Girls' College in the morn- 
ing, is a daughter of Rev. T. P. Dysart, my 
boyhood pastor. Miss Roxy Martin is a 
daughter of Rev. J. K. Martin, whose name 
is on my licensure certificate. Rev. W. L. 
McClenahan, who took me to the pyramids in 
the afternoon, is a near relation, for our 
grandparents were near neighbors in eastern 
Ohio and called on each other in the evening 
and stayed until bed time. Then others who 
were acquaintances in America are dear 
friends in Egypt. "We were nodding ac- 
quaintances, but when I bumped on him 
seven thousand miles from home, I fell on 
his neck and called him brother." 



157 



CLIMBING THE PYEAMIDS 




wo 
H 



s 
s 

a 
09 



XVII 

Climbing the Pyramids 

Climbing the pyramids is work. As I 
climbed up I broke off both back suspender 
buttons; as I jumped down I bursted both of 
my shoes. The pyramids are higher and 
steeper than they look in the picture. On 
your square thirteen-acre field, some fine 
morning, build a pyramid a little steeper 
than half pitch and you will have one like 
this biggest one. The steps up it are irregu- 
lar, varying from four inches to four feet. If 
you lost your foothold and bumped down over 
the stones three or four hundred feet you 
might get hurt. Yes, two Arab guides will 
help you climb, but they are a doubtful help, 
as they expect you to lift them about half 

161 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

time. They are not youthful lads ; my young- 
est guide was older than I and the oldest one 
looked about as old as the pyramids. The 
best that can be said for the pyramids is that 
they are somebody's graveyards and grave- 
stones and never were a good investment. 

Then I visited one of the two hundred and 
sixty-four mosques, the biggest one. Some 
marble floors partly covered with ancient 
rugs; some dingy walls once frescoed, and 
some lowly suppliants. These mosques may 
have been worth looking at once, but now 
they are neglected and greasy, and, like the 
pyramids, are filled with dead things. More 
interesting than temples and tombs is the liv- 
ing rush on the streets. "The Streets of 
Cairo" are more realistic than those we saw 
at the Chicago Exposition. The bazaars are 
bulging over with a thousand treasures and 
trifles. "A bazaar is a crazy corner gone 
wrong covered with a canopy of tattered rag 
carpets, filled with the imitation merchandise 
of a five and ten-cent store, a choking dust, 
twenty or thirty ripe odors, and a hundred 

162 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

and fifty coffee-colored lunatics talking at the 
same time." The streets are full of people, 
old and young, rich and poor, wise and fool- 
ish, and most of them are talking or singing 
or crying. Then the animals crowd in, the 
horses and camels and donkeys and dogs and 
goats. And it is interesting to watch. Bet- 
ter than to watch the streets is to go into the 
homes of our missionaries and commune with 
them about the things of the Kingdom, or to 
turn into a quiet nook and read the church 
papers or the Herald, which I had not seen 
for weeks. I never knew how good our 
home papers are until I read them in a strange 
land. 

Or, it is better to go into our excellent mis- 
sion schools and see and hear the bright boys 
and girls who will wake up Egypt one of 
these bright days. And what is better than 
to go into Miss Smith's orphanage and see 
that gracious work among the little ones 
which the Saviour Himself loves to watch? 
Or, for real enjoyment, go into the Thursday 
evening prayer meeting, in Dr. Harvey's old 

163 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

home, and sing glad songs and bow with 
friends who get very near to God. One day 
with missionary friends is better than a thou- 
sand with the dragomen. 

Did I visit the great Cairo Museum? Cer- 
tainly, I walked along its ghostly halls and 
looked upon those ghastly remains. Some 
precious and pretty things, but everything is 
old and dead; dead people, dead cows, dead 
cats, "long time dead." Papyri, Sarcophagi, 
cynocephali, bacilli and ennui are the chief 
exhibits. There are a few hundred coffins and 
mummies, mummies of men and beasts and 
birds. Everything is so old it strains the 
imagination and conscience trying to think 
back to it. The catalogue works the word 
" funerary" hard to describe this museum. 

The mediums do not have to ring up the 
departed, for they are right there, and you 
can talk to them face to face. There were 
some old-timers there, faces that I didn't rec- 
ognize at all. 

Even old Pharaoh is there, the one who tried 
to bluff Moses, they say, and he doesn't look 

164 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

any older than the rest. I wanted to ask him 
some questions, but he wasn't communicative, 
hasn't gotten over his miff yet. 

Some people find great messages in this 
charnel-house, but if the dead do not speak 
any more truly than the living in Egypt there 
is little truth in the message. Egyptology has 
no charm for me. It is too ghoulish and 
fakish. I would rather see something 
living and young and sweet and fruitful and 
hopeful. 

I would rather get up early and go to the 
county fair and see the living creatures with 
the red and blue premium ribbons, and the 
large pumpkins and biggest red apples, and 
the red balloons, and hear the brass band and 
get my dinner at the dining tent run by the 
ladies of the Second Colored Baptist church. 

But I don't want to go to the fair this 
morning, I want to rush up to Assiut and see 
my baby-boy whom I haven't seen for three 
years. " Happy is the man that seeth the 
face of his son in a far country." 

Assiut, Egypt, May 14, 1910. 

165 



ALONG THE NILE 




Pn 



XVIH 



Along the Nile 



"In all the land of Egypt there was bread." 
The wheat crop is good along the Nile. It is 
harvested by the sickle, as in India. In Egypt 
I have not seen a reaping machine nor thresh- 
ing machine. But food is plentiful and the 
chief baker now, as in Joseph's day, has three 
wicker baskets, filled with cakes and sweet- 
meats, on his head and now, as then, the birds 
try to steal their share. Speaking of birds, 
some authorities say there are fleas in Egypt. 
I have not seen any wild animals in Africa 
only dogs and cats, but they say that in East- 
ern Africa there is big game, and that an 
American gentleman and his son have recently 

169 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

been killing these great animals off at a lively 
rate. 

But everywhere the most interesting thing 
is the people. Yet, these people are a sorry- 
looking lot. Some of the little children are 
bright and pretty, but most of them have 
little of the charm of childhood, for in baby- 
hood their little innocent eyes are ruined by 
the abuse and contempt put on them by super- 
stitious mothers. The women are not comely, 
for they dress in black and hide their faces. 
The men are more attractive, for they wear 
more cheerful colors and have faces. How 
blank and meaningless the human form when 
the face is hidden! The face is the repre- 
sentative of the person, the revelation of the 
character, and when it is hidden the person- 
ality is hidden. It is a crime to hide the face 
from which God would have the light and 
loveliness of life shine forth. Little wonder 
that women are little honored in a land where 
they hide the face that might reflect any 
beauty of their souls. 

If our Christian women at home, who on 

170 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

the funeral day robe themselves in black and 
hide their faces with heavy veils, knew how 
much they look like these poor heathen 
women they would be discouraged. If our 
friends die a hopeless death we might put on 
black; but if our beloved dead and we are the 
children of the resurrection we ought to put 
on something cheerful. "They shall walk 
with me in white for they are worthy." 

The glory of our Egyptian mission is its 
excellent Christian schools. Our mission- 
aries have found that the best way to reach 
these people and win them and train them is 
through Gospel schools. 

At the head of our educational institutions 
in Egypt stands Assiut College, with Profes- 
sor R. S. McClenahan its present head. In- 
deed, among all our United Presbyterian 
colleges Assiut stands at the head in number 
of students, in the beauty of its buildings, and 
in the value of its grounds. It has more stu- 
dents than Cooper and Tarkio together, than 
Monmouth and Westminster combined, and 
even more than Muskingum itself. It has 

171 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

strong Christian character and interest. 
This year thirty-five students confessed 
Christ as Saviour. Forty-three volunteered 
for mission work and many of them go out 
each Sabbath to help in the villages. A 
goodly number of the graduates will enter 
seminary in the fall. During the year the 
Sabbath offerings of the college for missions 
were $800. The exercises of the graduating 
class had a grace and finish that would honor 
any of our institutions. As I saw from what 
to what these young men had arisen I re- 
called a baccalaureate sermon by the elder 
President McMiehael on the text, "Though 
ye have lain among pots, yet shall ye be as 
the wings of a dove covered with silver and 
her feathers with yellow gold. ' ' 

John R. Mott wrote, "After visiting nearly 
all the missionary colleges I have no hesitancy 
in saying that Assiut College is one of the 
most strategic, most efficient and most fruit- 
ful colleges in the world. I know of no col- 
lege that has yielded larger practical results 
for the money." The governor of Assiut 

172 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

province wrote, "Through the influence of 
Assiut College thousands of young men have 
been trained into chaste and noble charac- 
ter." Beautiful words have been spoken of 
it by Lord Cromer, Helen Gould and Mr. 
Bryan. And if Mr. Roosevelt had passed 
through Assiut in day time he would have 
been "delighted" with Assiut College. Tus- 
kegee Institute was started in a chicken 
house and Assiut College was started in a 
donkey stable. The world's Saviour was born 
in a stable and cradled in a manger. 

Of the other 184 schools in our mission just 
as beautiful things could be said. Every one 
of them is a power for good. If you want to 
see something that will make you glad and 
proud of our mission, visit Miss Kyle's school 
for girls in Cairo. Early one morning I 
looked in upon it and it was beautiful as a 
vision. Our church should glory in the work 
our mission schools are doing. They are 
training boys and girls who will win Egypt 
for Christ. It is an inspiration to look in on 
them and see the power and grace of Gospel 

173 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

education. There is Christian cheerfulness in 
these schools. You would enjoy hearing the 
little cherubs in the Alexandria Kindergarten 
school sing "Deedle, Deedle Dumpty; My Son 
John," and the little ones at Assiut singing 
"I Like Little Pussy," or the older ones sing- 
ing "I Love the Name of 'P. M. I.' " By the 
way, some of the young men teachers in 
Assiut College seem to have learned that same 
song. 

You would enjoy hearing them recite the 
Catechism and Bible verses. I don't know 
any other children who can do it so well, un- 
less it be the Juniors at Tarkio. 

Seventeen young people from Monmouth 
College are doing good work in Egypt. Mr. 
Owen and Mr. Elder are live teachers in 
Assiut College and give an example of strong, 
cheerful manhood. Miss Elsie French is do- 
ing honor work in study and teaching and 
getting all "A's," as in Monmouth. Misses 
Stella Kyle and Jeanette Tinker are doing fine 
work and backing it up with beautiful lives. 
The Hickmans are fine missionaries and lead- 

174 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

ers in their work. Mr. Bell is lonesome be- 
cause his wife and baby have gone home. 
Mr. Hoyman did master-work in the con- 
struction of the buildings and now is teach- 
ing. Neil McClanahan is a dignified and able 
theological professor and Mrs. McClanahan 
can sing as well as Jennie Smith could in 
Monmouth. And she cannot only sing, but is 
a winning missionary. 

All the missionaries give visitors such a 
gracious welcome! In three homes in Assiut 
they were friendly enough to invite me to 
" supper" instead of " dinner" in the evening. 

In Cairo there was much excitement during 
the trial of Wardani, the assassin of the Pre- 
mier. The defense urged that the assassin 
was insane and his victim died not from his 
wounds but from the maltreatment of them. 
But Wardani goes to the gallows. 

The medical work in Egypt is a blessed 
Grospel work. Those in charge are not only 
skillful physicians but earnest Gospel mis- 
sionaries. The work they do is marvelous. 
The number of patients treated last year was 

175 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

over forty thousand. Nothing greater has 
been done since the days of the Saviour, and 
there is no work more like His. In the Assiut 
hospital it was a joy to see little children 
nursed back into life. One of the saddest 
sights there was a fierce-looking woman 
ashamed of her baby because it belonged to 
the same sex she did. One of the gladdest 
was an old man, happy in his afflictions as he 
read the ninety-first Psalm. 

The two greatest things in Egypt are not 
the pyramids and the Nile, but Sister Dorcas' 
hospital at Assiut and Miss Smith's orphan- 
age at Cairo. 

The work among the women is encourag- 
ing. Three thousand women are taught the 
Gospel in their homes. Four thousand 
women, 40 per cent- of our entire membership, 
come to the Christian schools. 

The natives are eager to get Bibles and 
Gospel books. Nearly sixty thousand vol- 
umes of the Scriptures were sold in Egypt 
last year. Did our Church at home buy more % 

176 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

Over sixteen thousand Gospel books were 
sold. 

The results of our mission work are encour- 
aging. We have in Egypt a United Presby- 
terian church of over ten thousand members 
and nearly all our congregations are self- 
supporting. Twice the number of the mem- 
bership attends church, while most of our 
home churches have smaller attendance than 
membership. The number in Sabbath school 
is larger than the church membership, while 
ours is smaller. Many more, in proportion, 
than at home are led to confess the Saviour, 
and more of the converts become soul 
winners. 

Our mission is getting a good hold on the 
Mohammedans. Thousands of Moslem boys 
and girls are in our schools and getting Bible 
lessons. Hundreds of Moslem women are 
getting Gospel teaching from our women. 
Many Moslem men are inquiring about 
Christ the Saviour. 

Our friends at Alexandria have entered 
into their new building. Some one ought to 

177 



EOUND ABOUT JEEUSALEM 




My home in Jerusalem. 



XIX 

Round About Jerusalem 



Jerusalem is the city we all long to visit, 
for here our Saviour lived and died for us. 
Here are elements of sacred interest, histor- 
ical and typological, which no other city on 
earth can ever have. Here we may find, in 
a village near by, the place of our Saviour's 
birth; here, on the temple site, the scene of 
His presentation, His boyhood visit and much 
of His ministry, and here the place of His 
sorrow, death, burial, resurrection and ascen- 
sion. 

It is a privilege to be near the. scenes of 
His earthly life. We cherish as precious the 
places where our loved ones have lived. But 
it is a mistake to suppose we can get nearer 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

to Jesus here than with our Bible and prayer 
and faithful service at home. 

From Egypt to the Promised Land in less 
than forty hours, while I understood it took 
some of the pioneers forty years to make the 
journey. From Cairo to Jerusalem in twenty- 
five hours, and soon the journey will be made 
in half that time. From Jaffa to Jerusalem 
as we saw the harvest fields and terraced 
gardens and vineyards and olive orchards we 
thought we were in Palestine. As we saw the 
shepherd leading his flock and mossy wild 
flowers by the roadside, and the mountains 
with color of gray and brown and green, and 
people clothed like they were in the long ago, 
we knew we were in the Holy Land and 
marching on to Zion, the beautiful city of God. 

It is the Holy Land, for here the Holy Book 
was given, and here the Holy One, for us, 
lived and died and rose again. 

It was evening time when, weary and dusty, 
we walked into Jerusalem and wondered 
where we might find an abiding place. We 
were glad when a door was opened and we 

184 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

were welcomed in through a court filled with 
flowers into a home where there was a table 
spread and a room of rest was ready. We 
were cheered by the pleasant voices of men 
and women and the prattle of children and 
the cooing of a babe. We found a large fam- 
ily indeed. Abraham and Moses and Samuel 
and David and Peter and John were there, 
and we found in that household seven women 
who bore the beautiful name of Mary. There 
were one hundred and twenty men, women 
and children in that home, who seemed to 
keep step to the music of the one hundred and 
thirty-third Psalm. 

In that home there did not seem to be any- 
thing to hurt nor destroy; no angry words, no 
odor of tobacco, no fumes of strong drink. 
Delectable food was on the table and all the 
rooms were sweetly clean. A blessing was 
asked at the table, and the one hundred and 
twenty disciples gathered in a large upper 
room, where, with song and the reading of the 
Word and prayer, they united in family wor- 
ship. This home gives a welcome to the 

185 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

stranger and there we meet with friends from 
many parts of the world. 

Our first walk, round about Jerusalem, was 
to Bethany, for in walking through the gar- 
den beyond the Kedron, and over Mount 
Olivet and through the village of Bethany, 
we feel that more surely than in other places 
we are walking in the earthly footsteps of 
our Redeemer. 

Just across the brook Kedron from the 
eastern gate there is a garden enclosed which 
must be very near the garden that was called 
Gethsemane, where our Saviour carried our 
sorrows. On over Olivet is a steep path up 
and down which, late in the evening or early 
in the morning, Jesus walked to and from 
his ministry in Jerusalem. For it is not writ- 
ten that Jesus ever spent a night in that city 
until that night when He was dragged up 
there before the judgment-seat. When the 
evening came and the disciples went to their 
own homes Jesus went out to the Mount of 
Olives to spend the night in prayer or to the 
quiet village of Bethany, where awaited Him 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

restful welcome from the three friends He 
loved. 

Bethany, where was a home honored 
above all others by the frequent visits of the 
Son of God, a home where the Saviour and 
His disciples found welcome and rest and en- 
tertainment. Bethany, where the sisters 
spread a thanksgiving feast to Him who 
raised their brother from the dead, and 
brought out the precious ointment. Bethany, 
from which, when His earthly visit was fin- 
ished, our Lord rose into the heavens with 
His hands stretched out in blessing upon the 
world He came to redeem. 

Our first ride was out to Bethlehem, five 
miles south and one west of Jerusalem. On 
the way we pass Rachel's tomb. The gardens 
and fields are well tilled. Vineyards and 
orchards cover the hillsides. The olive trees 
are in bloom. The shepherds watch their 
flocks by the wayside. Wild flowers fill in all 
the nooks. West of Bethlehem the hills are 
covered with olive trees that look more like 
a forest than anything we have seen in Pales- 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

tine. In general, this country looks bare and 
treeless, for what trees are here are not tall 
and towering like ours. The Holy Land is 
under the blight of the unholy Turk. The 
land does as well as might be expected from 
a shiftless people under torment rule. 

In Bethlehem we walked through the 
Church of the Nativity and down under it 
into the Grotto of the Nativity. It has a 
marble floor and the walls are hung with 
draperies, and it is poorly lighted by thirty 
little lamps and the candle that you carry in 
your hand. There is a silver star in the floor 
to mark the place where the Child was born, 
and a marble manger near by to represent the 
cradle in which He was laid. Pilgrims were 
kneeling and kissing the star and the cradle. 
The most that can be said for the spot is that 
the Khan of Bethlehem must have been near 
there. Near the Bethlehem gate we visited a 
well that may have been the one of which 
David said, "0, that one would give me drink 
of the well of Bethlehem which is by the 
gate," 

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OtfCE AROUND THE WORLD 

In Jerusalem we visited the temple area 
and near the site of Solomon's temple saw 
the Mosque of Omar and the Mosque of El 
Aksa. The Mosque of Omar, or Dome of the 
Rock, stands next to Mecca as a Moham- 
medan shrine. It is a magnificent, costly 
building, whose only natural use is to shelter 
that great limestone rock which was once the 
threshing floor of Araunah, and which would 
really enjoy itself better out in the weather 
with other big rocks. 

We visited Gordon's Calvary and think it 
is a clever effort to find a spot which the 
Lord intends to keep hidden. In the Garden 
Tomb we find a good illustration of a royal 
tomb in our Saviour's day. 

Yes, we visited the Church of the Holy 
Sepulchre, but did not hear any angel say, 
"Come, see the place where the Lord lay." 
Persons with strong faith in such things can 
here find not only the sepulchre in which the 
Saviour lay, but the hole in which His cross 
stood, and the slab on which His body was 
laid for anointing and the cleft in the rock 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

made by the earthquake, and the grave of 
Adam. 

Pilgrims are bowing to kiss these things, 
and here we find the religion of prostrations 
and osculations at its worst, unsanitary and 
unsanctified. The Church of the Holy 
Sepulchre is manifestly a show place, dis- 
tinctly artificial, and arranged with depart- 
ment store precision and convenience. The 
true Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the 
little white church in the country near the 
cemetery where the bodies of believers being 
still united to Christ do rest in their graves 
until the resurrection. 

The last evening we were in Jerusalem we 
took a walk round the city outside the walls. 
The walls are a wonder yet; "their stones 
have tongues, their towers are eloquent." 
The Golden Gate on the east side has long 
been closed by great stones, for the Moslems 
have a presentiment that some day the 
Christians will enter by that gate. The great 
stones that block it might stand thirty sec- 
onds in a modern siege. But some day the 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

Christians will enter. Maybe not by that 
golden gate, bnt by the golden gate of com- 
merce and good- will, and surely by the golden 
gate of the Gospel. 

We enjoyed that evening walk about Zion, 
and of the God of Zion said, "This God is our 
God forever and ever." 

Alexandria, June 7, 1910. 



191 



GALILEE, SWEET GALILEE 




The Sea of Galilee from my window. 



XX 

Galilee, Sweet Galilee 

From Jerusalem to Nazareth, along the car- 
riage road by way of Haifa on the sea, is one 
hundred and thirty miles. Jacob told us that 
Moses would be a good man to take us, and 
he did whirl us along at a lively rate over the 
hill country of Judea. Moses aspired to come 
to New York next fall. 

North of Jerusalem nine miles we have our 
parting view of the city and of Olivet. Up 
the way we pass Bethel and go on through 
the valley of Shiloh. In the evening we came 
to a city of Samaria that is called Sychar. 
Now Jacob 's well is there. The shrines about 
the well and in all the valley of Shechem 
round about indicate that the people have 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

long ago forgotten the words which Jesus 
spoke as He sat on the well, "God is a- Spirit 
and they that worship Him must worship 
Him in spirit and in truth." 

Turning to the west we pass between 
Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, from which 
were spoken the words of cursing and of 
blessing. "The view from these mountain- 
tops sweeps over all Palestine, from snowy 
Hermon to the mountains round about Jeru- 
salem, from Carmel to Nebo, from the sap- 
phire expanse of the Mediterranean to the 
violet valley of the Jordan." Between these 
mountains lies the city of Nablous, successor 
of Sychem, the first city mentioned in the 
Bible. "It has twenty-five thousand people, 
a Turkish governor, a garrison, several soap 
factories and a million dogs which howl all 
night." 

The next day we drove through the Plain 
of Sharon, and found it the most fruitful 
place we had yet seen in Palestine. The har- 
vest was ripe and the reapers were in the 
fields at five o'clock in the morning. Men, 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

women and children all help in the harvest 
field and they work in bands of sometimes 
fifty people. 

They still reap with sickles all over Pales- 
tine, but in this Plain of Sharon we saw a few 
reaping machines, drawn with oxen; the old 
McCormick self-rake like our fathers used. 
We saw a good many cradles in the fields, not 
grain cradles, but baby cradles, for they take 
the babies to the field and put them to sleep 
in the cradles. The harvesters looked as 
though they would swelter. They had their 
heads bound up as though they all had the 
toothache. In Palestine the people wear 
plenty of clothing. In China and India they 
wear too little clothing, but in Egypt and 
Palestine they wear too much. In Palestine 
especially, men and women, at work or at 
rest, load themselves down with winter 
clothing in summer. In the sunshine of May, 
with the thermometer at ninety, they wear 
overcoats and cloaks and bundle their necks 
with a shawl as if they were out in a snow- 
storm. One hot morning I saw an old bare- 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

footed gentleman wearing four overcoats, two 
of them lined with sheepskin and the other 
two heavy with tassels and tinsel and over 
them all a shawl. 

At Haifa we found that Mount Carmel 
reaches up snug against the Mediterranean 
sea. From the summit we had a view of the 
Bay of Acre, of Tyre and Sidon, and the 
mountain ranges of Phoenicia and Galilee to 
Lebanon and Mount Hermon. We ate our 
picnic dinner on the mountain top, under a 
tree, as Elijah may have done some time, and 
in the evening climbed down the steep side 
of the mountain. We waited all that day at 
Haifa while Moses kept his Jewish Sabbath, 
and in the interval between his Sabbath and 
ours drove thirty miles to Nazareth. 

We spent the Sabbath in Nazareth. In the 
morning we followed the Saviour's "custom" 
of going to church, although the only church 
open to us was of a strange speech and a 
strange worship. In the afternoon we found 
a better sanctuary in our room. In the eve- 
ning we took a walk to the heights above the 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

city, among the cypress and olive trees along 
a path over which I think the boy Jesus must 
have walked, for he spent his boyhood years 
within a few minutes' walk of this hill. 

From this hill is one of the finest views of 
the Holy Land. To the north the boy Jesus 
could have seen the ranges of Lebanon to 
snow-crowned Hermon, and to the east 
Mount Tabor and the valley of the Jordan. 
In the south the coming Prince of Peace could 
overlook the Plain of Esdraelon, Battlefield of 
the Nations, and in the west, under the set- 
ting sun, could see the glittering w T aters of the 
Mediterranean. The childhood of Jesus was 
not spent in a secluded spot. 

Nazareth has over ten thousand people. 
We saw some neat houses and some cheerful 
people and were interested in seeing so many 
bright babies in their mothers' arms. 

In Nazareth there are the schools of the 
English Missionary Society and the hospital 
of the British Medical Mission, so the good 
work of teaching and healing is still going on. 

After Jesus had begun His ministry over 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

in the vicinity of the Jordan He returned to 
Nazareth and one Sabbath day began to 
preach to His neighbors about comfort for 
the broken-hearted and deliverance for the 
captives and sight for the blind, but they 
would not hear His gracious words and rose 
up and thrust Him out of their city and tried 
to cast Him headlong from the brow of the 
hill on which their city was built. But Jesus 
passed through their midst and went over to 
the lake of Galilee to preach, and, as far as I 
can learn, never returned to Nazareth again. 
Monday morning, by walking and riding 
horseback and on the train, we reached the 
Sea of Galilee before noon. We crossed the 
River Jordan several times. It is only a 
creek, with few trees and many wild flowers. 
We took the boat to Tiberias and enjoyed a 
sail on the waters where Jesus had often 
sailed with His disciples. In the afternoon 
we took a walk to the northwest corner of the 
lake and went in bathing. In the evening we 
sat on the veranda of the Franciscan Hospice 
and thought of how much of the ministry of 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

Jesus had been done in the vicinity of this 
lake. 

Walking by the sea one day Jesus found 
Peter and his brother Andrew fishing, and 
said to them, "Follow me and I will make you 
fishers of men." And a little further on He 
found James and John, his brother, in a ship 
with Zebedee, their father, mending their 
nets, and He called them to be His disciples. 
On a boat in the edge of this lake He preached 
more than one sermon to the people on the 
shore. On a mountain near by He preached 
His great sermon of blessings. On the moun- 
tains near by He sometimes spent the whole 
night in prayer. 

One night, when a great storm was on the 
sea, He was asleep on a pillow, and the dis- 
ciples woke Him up, for they were afraid, and 
He stilled the tempest with His word of 
peace. 

On the shores of this sea Jesus one day 
spread a wondrous feast and fed multitudes 
and said, "I am the Bread of Life, he that 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

eometh to me shall never hunger and he that 
belie veth on me shall never thirst." 

Near the sea Jesus saw a great company 
of heavy-laden ones and said, "Come unto 
me, and I will give you rest." 

And Jesus loved this sea so much that after 
He was risen from the dead He came back to 
it and spread a farewell breakfast for His 
disciples. 

"Farewell, dear lake of Jesus! Our eyes 
may never rest on thee again, but surely they 
will not forget thee. And may our hearts 
never lose the comradeship of Him who made 
thee holiest among all the waters of the 
world!" 

Florence, Italy, June 15, 1910. 



202 



THE LAND OF HERMON 




In Damascus. 




At Baalbek. 



XXI 

The Land of Hermon 

From the Lake of Galilee to Damascus the 
railroad runs much of the way along the 
Yarmuk river. Along this river we saw a 
forest of oleanders, many of the bushes 
twenty feet high with thousands of flowers 
on each bush. At Rawal Pindi we saw 
eleven miles of roses, but here are thirty-three 
miles of oleanders, varying from few rods to 
a quarter of a mile in width. If I had all the 
wild flowers I saw that day I think I could 
give a bouquet to every man, woman and 
child on earth and have enough left over to 
do it again tomorrow. 

Damascus is on an oasis. The Damascenes 
claim that the plain of Damascus is as fruit- 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

ful and well-wooded as any area of its size in 
the world. The Abana and Pharpar rivers 
bring them this great blessing and that is why 
they love these rivers and ask, "Are not 
Abana and Pharpar rivers of Damascus bet- 
ter than all the rivers of Israel?" 

Damascus is a wonderful city. Its people 
say that it is the oldest city in the world and 
call it the "Immortal City," and the "Pearl 
Set in Emeralds." It is pearl shaped and 
its color is pearly gray and its myriads of 
green trees give it the emerald setting. The 
city is now on a boom and claims, including 
its suburbs, a population of half a million. 

The bazaars of Damascus are the most 
famous in the East, vegetable bazaars, fruit 
bazaars, meat bazaars, cotton bazaars, silk 
bazaars, old-clothes bazaars. Some of these 
are large and splendid, and some of them small 
and filthy. 

The greatest building in Damascus is the 
Mosque of Omeiyades, successor to the 
"House of Rimmon." Everybody visits the 
"Street which is called Straight." It is 

206 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

fairly straight, but probably only one-third 
as wide as in Paul's day. Remnants of 
arches indicate that the old-time street must 
have been a famous one, the Broadway of the 
city. Those who have faith enough can turn 
aside and see the " House of Ananias," now a 
Latin chapel. 

But the glory of Damascus is the river 
Abana, which flows through it. It is only 
two or three rods wide, but swift and clear 
and cold from the snows of Lebanon. 

' 'Damascus has given its name to the red- 
dest of roses, to the sweetest of plums, to the 
richest of metal work and to the most lustrous 
of silks." 

At Baalbek, successor to Heliopolis, City 
of the Sun, the old-time center of Baal wor- 
ship, we saw the famous ruins of the Temple 
of the Sun and the Temple of Jupiter. There 
is a row of columns ninety feet high yet stand- 
ing. The stones in the wall are bigger than 
those in the walls of Jerusalem. In the 
quarry we saw a stone all hewn and ready for 
the Temple of the Sun, but for some reason 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

never put in it, and the space is filled with 
smaller stones. This stone that has been 
waiting thousands of years for its place in the 
wall is fourteen feet square and seventy feet 
long. 

The railroad from Baalbek to Beyruit 
passes over the Lebanon mountains, a mile 
high, and many miles of it are a cog railway. 
The scenery is as fine as in Colorado, and 
always beautified by wild flowers. In north- 
ern Syria Mount Hermon is always in sight. 

In Beyruit we spent the Sabbath pleasantly 
with friends at the Syrian Protestant College, 
a fine institution, maintained by some noble 
men of New York. The teachers are Amer- 
ican college young men and those we met are 
from the West — Wisconsin, Kansas, the Da- 
kotas, Washington, Oregon and California. 

The land of Palestine is sadly abused and 
has little of its old-time glory. These people 
have robbed their lands, and murdered their 
trees, and dried up their springs, and by their 
rebellion shut off the dews of heaven, and now 
rebels do inhabit parched lands. If they had 

208 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

spent the time and treasure wasted on tem- 
ples and tombs in planting trees and opening 
up water courses they might be living in a 
garden instead of in a desert. But conditions 
are imx3roving, and the German colonists and 
others are showing how Palestine can be re- 
stored. Alfalfa does well here and our Secre- 
tary Wilson has been encouraging its intro- 
duction into this country. 

Some people pity Jesus for having to spend 
His whole life in Palestine instead of in some 
pleasanter place in the earth. But Palestine 
had its pleasant places in His day. The 
imagery of the Song of Songs was not taken 
from Switzerland nor Colorado. Likely in 
our Saviour's day Palestine was the beauty 
spot of the earth. Then it was not the para- 
disiacal features of this earth that attracted 
to it the Lord of Glory. In visiting the Holy 
Land we have become better acquainted with 
the man Christ Jesus. We have seen the town 
where the Babe of Bethlehem was born, and 
the city where the Child of Nazareth grew 
into manhood, and the lake where the Man 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

of Galilee did most of His mighty works, and 
the village where He made His Bethany home, 
and the city where He died and rose again. 
We shall not forget Bethlehem, nor Nazareth, 
nor the Lake of Galilee, nor Mount Hermon, 
nor Jerusalem, nor Olivet, nor Bethany. We 
have not been disappointed in our visit to 
Palestine. It is true to the Bible picture. 

Brussels, Belgium, June 22, 1910. 



210 



INTO EUROPE 



XXII 
Into Europe 

The train we took is the one which does not 
even hesitate at the small stations. We had 
glimpses of Italy, Prussia, Germany, Belgium 
and France. The Straits of Messina we 
passed in the night, but at sunrise had a good 
view of Stromboli. 

Naples nestles cosily in its placid bay, a 
pretty, prosperous city, and sets up Vesuvius 
as a chief attraction and puts up an extra 
dyke now and then to keep back the lava 
stream. 

Italy, in contrast with the desert lands of 
the East, looks like a green and fertile place. 
It is one continuous garden, orchard and 
vineyard. 

213 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

Rome is a city that one needs not days but 
years to visit. We glanced at the Coliseum, 
the Forum, St. Peter's and the Vatican, and 
a few of the smaller things. We did not visit 
the Pope, for we did not think his invitation 
cordial enough. We saw Peter's toe and ob- 
served that it was pale from constant kissing. 
We did not examine carefully all the rare 
and precious things in the eleven thousand 
rooms in the Vatican palace. Of the paint- 
ings, sculptures and antiquities I could readily 
write volumes — directly from the handbooks 
— but you can find the same stuff in your 
encyclopedias. Don't look for it in the Bible. 

Florence, on the Arno, girt about with 
mountains, sits as a queen, the " fairest city 
in the world." Italy has magnificent public 
buildings, but its homes have little grace or 
finish. The windows are small and almost 
shut up with shutters and bars. It seems to 
have no country homes. We miss the white 
cottage and red barn and the little white 
country schoolhouse. 

214 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

Germany looks like a great park and is nice 
enough for anybody to live in. Of course its 
gardens and fields are well cultivated and 
weeds have a short and uncertain life. It was 
hay harvest and Maud Muller, a great many 
of her, was in the field. As many women as 
men were in the fields and the boys and girls 
were helping. 

Scythes cut most of the grass, but we saw 
a few mowing machines. The houses in Ger- 
many are much nicer than in Italy. The 
glory of the German landscape is its trees, its 
great forests of pine. I never saw thrifty 
trees grow closer together. Germany has 
heard the interdiction, "Woodman, spare that 
tree." They plant trees faster than they cut 
them down. The millions of young trees that 
spring up each year would cheer the heart of 
a Pinchot. 

Munich is a fine city, much like our St. 
Louis. Heidelberg's chief attraction is its 
old castle, oldest and biggest in Europe, now 
a ruin. Cologne has its fine old cathedral with 

215 



OUT OF EUROPE 




EIFFEL TOWER 



XXIH 
Out of Europe 

Brussells, the capital of Belgium, is a fine 
city, with some of the splendor of San Fran- 
cisco. Here we have found the big dogs that 
help the women draw their market carts. 
Here we found the Belgium horses that are 
bigger than a young elephant. Here we found 
the most beautiful boys and girls that we have 
seen in Europe. 

We attended the Universal Exposition, held 
in Brussells this summer. It is not as big as 
the World's Fair at Chicago or St. Louis, but 
neat and artistic. We saw many reminders 
of the beautiful things we had seen in other 
lands and had introduction to the great things 

221 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

we are yet to see and saw some welcome 
things of our own dear land. 
. We went out to the Battlefield of Waterloo, 
fourteen miles south of Brussells, and climbed 
to the top of the great mound that marks the 
site of that decisive battle. This mound is 
two hundred feet high and is surmounted by 
a great British lion, weighing twenty-three 
tons, cast from cannon balls gathered from 
the battlefield. Wheat fields are waving 
peacefully where the multitudes fell on that 
historic day. 

France is a fruitful field. Paris is a gay 
city, too big for a quick focus. Its buildings 
are lined inside and out with mirrors and the 
Parisians never weary of looking at them- 
selves. It is the second five hundred feet in 
the Eiffel Tower in which it exceeds all other 
towers that gives you the sense of exaltation. 
I do not expect to get farther above earthly 
things until I buy my flying machine or get 
my new wings. Yes, we visited the Notre 
Dame and the Madaleine, the Palais and 
Musee du Louvre, Napoleon's Tomb, Place de 

222 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

la Concorda, Arc de Triomphe, and the 
Champs Elysses and the other seven world- 
wonders of Paris. For a partial description 
see the three million volumes in the Biblio- 
theque Nationale. 

The Seine river looks as tranquil and inno- 
cent as if it had forgotten its last spring's 
flood of sorrows. 

Of the British Isles we had but a glance, 
and the full story has been often told. It is 
easy to realize that London is the metropolis 
of the world, for it combines the greatness and 
beauty of the other great cities. 

Westminster Abbey is the most interesting 
place in the city, but it is more of a sepulchre 
than a sanctuary, and all the services seem 
like funeral services. 

Since we had such a short time in Scotland 
the sun was very considerate and stayed up 
until almost nine o'clock, and we could read 
by daylight after ten o'clock in the evening. 
I am not able to report at what hour the sun 
rose. 

The weather was wet and chilly and I was 

223 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

glad to see many flocks of sheep, for the wool 
is needed to keep the people warm in summer. 

In Edinburgh we walked along Princess 
street and talked of its beauty and of the 
Castle and of Scott's monument and visited 
John Knox's house and Greyfriars' church- 
yard. 

In Glasgow we missed by a few hours the 
pleasure of visiting Miss Rena Hogg in her 
mother's home. 

I longed for time to wait and visit in the 
homes of some of the Scotch folk, for more 
interesting than scenery and statuary is the 
life of the people. 

Some very pleasant things came to me near 
the close of my journey. In Ireland, near 
Londonderry, I visited some of the scenes of 
my father's early life. Seventy-one years ago 
he crossed the Atlantic in a sailboat and was 
six weeks on the voyage. Here, too, I spent 
a Sabbath with Mr. Robert Foster and family, 
who for many years had been members of my 
Amity congregation, and in a large country 
church preached to them as in the days gone 

224 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

by. The king and queen could not have been 
better to us than Mr. and Mrs. Foster were. 

London, July 6, 1910. 



225 



AT HOME AGAIN 



XXIV 
At Home Again 

' ' Love, Eest and Home, Sweet, Sweet Home. ' ' 

The prayers of my friends are answered 
and I am safely at home again. Around the 
world, more than thirty-two thousand miles 
of travel, without accident or sickness or loss. 
A world-circuit without witnessing an act of 
violence or seeing anyone get hurt. Among 
Christians and heathen, mingling with the 
people of nineteen nations and nearly all 
nationalities without seeing one human being 
strike another maliciously. I did not hunt 
the peaceable paths, either. We have come 
to an era of good-will. There is no place on 
the world-map for Reno, Nevada. It belongs 
to a barbarous past. The path around the 

229 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

earth is narrow and we see little of the wide 
world. Some mountains to climb: the 
Rockies, Mount Kilauea, Mount Fuji, the 
Himalayas, Mount Olivet, Mount Carmel, 
Mount Hermon, Mount Stromboli, the Ap- 
ennines, the Alps and the Alleghanies. Some 
rivers to cross: the Mississippi, the Yangtse- 
kiang, the Ganges, the Nile, the Jordan, the 
Yarmuk, the Abana, the Tiber, the Danube, 
the Rhine, the Seine, the Thames, the Clyde, 
the Foyle. 

Some cities to view: San Francisco, Hono- 
lulu, Yokohama, Hongkong, Singapore, Ran- 
goon, Calcutta, Aden, Alexandria, Jerusalem, 
Bethlehem, Damascus, Rome, Innsbruck, 
Munich, Brussels, Paris, London, Edinburgh, 
Dublin, New York, and in them their capitols 
and churches, their temples and towers, their 
parks and palaces, their galleries and gardens. 

Some buildings to see: the Royal Palace, 
Hawaii; the Palace of Delights, Japan; the 
Temple of Horrors, China; the Schiwe Dagon 
Pagoda, the Taj Mahal, the Pyramid of 
Cheops, the Mosque of Omar, the Ruins of 

230 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

Baalbek, the Collisseum, the Heidelberg Cas- 
tle, the Cologne Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, 
the Westminster Abbey, the Edinburgh Cas- 
tle, the White House. 

Some people to consider; some old and many 
young, some rich and many poor, some bur- 
dened and many tripping along lightly, some 
weeping by the way and many singing a glad 
song. 

In every land we see more soldiers than in 
our own; infant^, cavalry, marines, in train- 
ing. But with new methods of warfare and 
new methods of avoiding war the common sol- 
dier and the common gun look vain and out 
of date. 

In all the eastern world the food for trav- 
elers is prepared and served by men. Uni- 
formly it has a rank, smoky, masculine taste 
and a mysterious, never-to-be-forgotten odor. 
My flesh faints for fresh food from fair femi- 
nine fingers, something savory and sweet 
smelling. 

Now that I have completed the circuit I 
would like to remark that all round the earth 

231 



ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

the speckled hen and the yellow cow are doing 
their full part in making the world happy. 

In the old world there are a great many 
millions of people who have never learned 
to say, "To beg I am ashamed." I speak not 
of the cry of the needy, which may be honor- 
able, but the empty clamor for gifts, and de- 
manding pay for pretense of service and 
pleading for presents in excess of stipulated* 
wages. Such begging is not only rife in Can- 
ton and Cairo, but is rampant in Paris and 
Edinburgh. But the champion beggars are 
the imperial steamship companies, who charge 
high, inclusive rates and then turn loose on 
their guests a horde of starving, begging 
servants. 

In the eastern lands we find many bearing 
heavy burdens, men doing the work of beasts, 
old men and women hitched in harness. At 
Nagasaki we saw women coaling the ships. 
At Sangla Hill we saw women and girls work- 
ing in the quarries, carrying loads of stone 
on their heads, walking barefoot over sharp 
stones, toiling twelve hours a day for twelve 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

cents. Mothers carrying stone while the little 
children watched the baby in the shadow of 
the rock. 

But burden-bearing is a mystery. I know 
some rich Iowa and Illinois farmers who bear 
heavier burdens than these heathen and whose 
wives work harder than these coal women and 
quarry women. And some of these wives do 
not get twelve cents a day. I know a few 
millionaires who toil harder and longer every 
day than any of these slaves. The saddest 
thing is so many of the heavy-laden ones have 
never heard Jesus say, "Come unto Me and 
rest." 

The saddest thing I saw was the hopeless 
look on the face of an old woman as she 
turned away from her idol for the ten thou- 
sandth time with her prayers unanswered. 
The gladdest sight I saw was the light of sal- 
vation on the face of an old man redeemed 
from heathenism. The most wonderful thing 
I saw was the power of redeeming grace in 
the mission fields, the Gospel changing hearts 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

and lives and working as the power of God 
unto salvation. 

All around the earth the people are pleas- 
ant and agreeable. "If you please" and "I 
thank you" are sounding everywhere, and the 
Gospel grace of courtesy has found its place 
in the hearts of the children of men. 

I stopped in Ohio and preached in the 
church of my childhood and ate dinner in the 
house in which I was born. 

Blessed be letter writing! Twelve thousand 
miles from home every letter is a love letter. 
By letters we can get nearer our absent 
friends than in any other way except when 
in prayer we meet them around the throne 
of grace. 

The world-circuit reaches from home and 
back to it again. I am sure I started west 
from Monmouth and kept on going west until 
I came into Monmouth from the east. I am 
sure the world is round, for I have gone 
around it. 

It is refreshing to be again in the home- 
land. There is no other land so broad and 

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ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 

generous. There is no other flag so inspiring 
as the stars and stripes. There is no other 
people with so much light on their faces. 

No other land has snch royal country 
homes. The nearest approach I found to it 
was in northern Ireland, but there it is an 
occasional lordly house with a cluster of 
humble cottages about it. But in our land the 
country home rises up in independent sov- 
ereignty, with others like it all about it, and 
in each of them a king and queen, and gen- 
erally royal children, and they have royal 
servants, for they serve themselves and others. 
America excels all lands in its country homes 
and country schools and country churches. 

I am ready to say with Mr. Spurgeon, l i The 
way home to me is the best bit of road in the 
country," and with Mr. Trowbridge, "The 
best of a journey is getting home." 

Monmouth, 111., July 20, 1910. 



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